Cheap tape drives for home lab

[red888]

I'm looking to put together a home lab to test backup configurations. I'd like to get 3 identical tape drives to play with cascades and stuff like that. What are the cheapest models of tape drives I can use with the latest version of back exec? Performance is not remotely important because this is just a lab. I'll also have to take into account the cost of media for those drives. 

Thanks for the help.

[AmolB]

Hello

 Latest version of BE is 2010R2 below is the hardware compatibility for the same.

 http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH137050

 Not sure of the cheapest model but the above will give you an idea about compatibility.

[red888]

Can I use drives that aren't in the compatibility list? I don't care about support so is there an old drive that isn't in the list, but will still work with the program?

[ZeRoC00L]

Red,

It can work, but Symantec does not guarantee that it will work, and does not provide support to it.

If you have a specific drive in mind, let us know, maybe someone has got it running.

[CraigV]

Hi red,

best bet is to look at getting a USB drive if you're looking for cheap tape drives. They probably won't give you the same sort of throughput as SCSI etc, but should serve your purpose.

DAT drives will be cheaper than LTO, but not offer the same sort of capacity. HP sell DAT drives for $999; Quantum have a DAT 72 (no price); IBM have the IBM System Storage TS2240.

All depends on what you want to spend.

A quick check for HP StorageWorks DAT on www.ebay.com shows a number of examples, and THAT might be the cheapest way to get the drives you're looking for...

Craig

[red888]

Well I'm looking more in the range of $15 $20 a drive. If I could use some the old travan drives I would. Do you think BE would recognize an ancient drive like that?

[CraigV]

Hey man,

probably no chance of that working. Only other option is to trawl through ebay and see what you can come up with.

You COULD make use of B2D folders on 3 HDDs...not quite tape, but it gives you the general idea of what you would want to do...

[UFO]

What does the term 'cheapest' mean? It should be better 'not higher than ... $100' or something like that.
The cheapest streamer I know is DW022A by HP. But it is like 560. Not cheap at all :(

[UFO]

Try to borrow the drives... some legacy ones.

[Colin_Weaver]

Also you mentioned playing with Cascades- for info the latest versions of Backup Exec no longer have the cascaded drive pool feature

[teiva-boy]

Use Vmware, and use a free opensource VTL that runs linux.

[red888]

So do you just "install" VTL software on top of an OS and then BE will see it as a physical tape library? 

[teiva-boy]

In a nutshell, yes.  The free one I've seen and have heard works fine, runs on top of linux.  Though I'm sure there are some that run on Windows, but are probably not free.

[UFO]

Pls, send the links to Linux ones.