Thanks to the many who responded.
> Two questions:
>
> 1. Are these competitive prices? ($635 to repair, $1500 trade-in for 8500c)
Most seemed to think so, especially since I won't have to pay the repair price
on the trade-in.
One response was:
>Here is a list of vendors doing repairs, along with prices from 3 months
>ago with EXB-8200 repair prices that you might want to check:
>
>Exabyte 1-800-445-7736 $575
>anDATAco 1-800-334-9191 575
>
(One had this to say about Andataco:
*I just sent an 8500c to Andataco for repair. I was
*given a figure of $675. Yesterday I got a call from
*them saying they were able to fix it in-house and
*thus would only charge me $300. It sounded like I
*wound up with a fairly simple problem.
>
>Unidata 1-916-362-1239 425
>Data Exchange 1-805-388-1711 350
>Advanced Data 1-800-333-3748 350
>DataTek Periph 1-800-829-2099 345
>RC Electronics 1-800-882-3475 325
>ICC 1-714-380-1097 275
Another had this comment:
*Got my 8200 repaired for $475.00 with 1 year warranty from:
*
* Trans-Force Int'l
* 570 S. Clearwater W.
* Post Falls, ID 83854
* (208) 773-3591
* ATTN: Randy Davis
*
*I got a loaner unit while they were repairing it also. This was for the
*drive unit only. I got the power supply warrantied in addition for $75.00
*for 15 months.
*
> 2. Is the compression on the 8500c true 2:1 or will it vary with data type?
>
Several pointed out that there is no such thing as a compression algorithm that
is not data related. If so you could compress to infinity.
I was ignorant of the method used to gain the higher density on the tape. From
what I gather it is through a compression scheme before the data reaches the
tape write mechanism.
The mechanism and data encoding on the tape are unchanged, unlike the switch
from MFM to RLE on drives a few years back, which used a more efficient
encoding scheme to increase data density.
Most reported that they got about 8 gig on a tape. Some got as little as a -2%
increase and others got as much as a 500% increase with particular types of
data.
The worst compression was, as you might expect, with files that had already
been compressed, such as compressed tar files.
Several suggested piping output into compress before sending it to the tape
drive. This is an interesting possibility but I will have to check to see if
it will work with our backup software.
Thanks again to the following:
Bruce Cogan <Bruce.Cogan@anu.edu.au>
Aydin Edguer <edguer@alpha.CES.CWRU.Edu>
davec@cs.ust.hk (Dave Curado)
Dave Fetrow <fetrow@biostat.washington.edu>
Mike Raffety <miker@il.us.swissbank.com>
rlyle@nl.oracle.com (Rob Lyle UNIX Sys Admin)
mel@maths.aberdeen.ac.uk
Mark Herberger <mherberg@eve044.cpd.ford.com>
djm@blue.Millipore.COM (Drew Montag)
Bob Drzyzgula (rcd@frb.gov)
Nate Mann AP35-1008 x4774 <ndmann@tacl.dnet.ge.com>
ljm@halsp.hitachi.com (Larry J. Miller)
gwh@ecliptic.stat.nielsen.com (G W 'Hap' Hinrichs III)
chris@voyager.techsource.com (J. Chris Hanson)
fmufti@genetics.bio-rad.com (Fazeel Mufti 6895)
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