The tape drive
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The tape drive (or: streamer) is and has long been the first
choice backup drive. It basically is a cassette recorder that saves data
digitally.
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Tape drives store a lot of data (usually several GB) on removeable
cassettes called cartridges. They have a horrible access time,
however, and that makes them useless for read/write tasks other than
backups.
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OnStream ADR 50 GB streamer with 30 / 50 GB cartridges
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There are two kinds of tapes:
- Floppy streamers, which are connected to the IDE controller via the 34-pin-floppy cable,
and
- SCSI streamers, which are connected to the SCSI controller via internal or external
SCSI cable.
Floppy streamers are much slower, store less data per inch of tape, and
are far less expensive.
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