From TNPC issue #4.23...

New Tape Drives Are Worth a Look

by Al Gordon
November 15, 2001

So now that you have the latest and greatest backup software, you need the latest and greatest devices on which to store the backup files. Submitted for your approval: the VXA-1 from Ecrix and the OnStream Echo tape drives. For more information about backup software, see my article in TNPC #4.18 "Retrospect: Is This a Better Backup?"

The long-established Travan technology occupies the low-end space in the tape backup world, with drives priced at $300 or less. Travan is slow, and tapes have a maximum capacity of 10GB native/20GB compressed; not enough to handle today's larger hard drives, much less workgroup or home networks. On the other hand, faster, high capacity technologies such as DLT tend to start just under $2,000 and quickly climb to $5,000 and beyond.

Ecrix and OnStream have pitched their marketing tents in the space in between, but not in the same place.

Ecrix:
http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/423/tr.cgi?al2

OnStream:
http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/423/tr.cgi?al3

OnStream's Echo (the consumer/SOHO product) starts at a street price of $250 for an internal IDE drive and goes on up to $500 for an external--and Mac-only--FireWire unit. In between are internal and external SCSI and external parallel port and USB drives. The drives use the ADR tape format (it looks like an oversized Travan) developed by Philips Electronics. ADR uses eight recording tracks for speedy recording. Echo is a logical step up from Travan, and at prices that can be less expensive than Travan.

Native capacity of ADR cartridges is 15 MB; compressed is a maximum of 30 MB. Street prices are around $45 for OnStream's cartridges, but you can buy Verbatim's brand for $35.

Note that compressed capacity is... let's be polite here... "exaggerated." Industry convention claims that the native capacity can be as much as doubled, but that is based on optimistic assumptions about file types and sizes. Getting a 30% or 40% improvement over native capacity is more realistic.

Ecrix's proprietary VXA tape drives inhabit a loftier price point, with street prices starting around $700 and running up to the $1,000 mark. Less for an internal unit, more for external. The drives are now available in all the major flavors--SCSI, FireWire, and now--through Compaq and other resellers--IDE. Tape capacities run up to 33GB native/66GB compressed, with the largest capacity media at $75 a pop. The 12/24 and 20/40 run $35 and $5 respectively, so the media prices are a little less than ADR.

The drives and media are now making their way to normal retail channels and the street prices have dropped 15-20%. While I was in the process of preparing this article, the company announced it will be merged into Exabyte Corporation, a maker of high capacity tape drives. This should further improve VXA product distribution and affordability. Still, VXA drives are not for the home user, obviously (unless, of course, you are a home user with really deep pockets). The target market is small businesses and workgroups, which need to support backup of critical data on their networks.

I tested the USB version of the Echo and the FireWire VXA. I did not have 5 1/4 inch bays available for the internal drives and also wanted to check out the efficacy of the two external connector technologies. As OnStream does not have Windows drivers for its FireWire drives and Ecrix does not make a USB version, comparisons of speed would be apples and oranges. FireWire is inherently faster than USB, and I saw backup speeds as high as 200 MB/min with the VXA versus a max of 60 MB/min with the Echo. USB ports, however, are available on most PCs today while FireWire is rare. I would expect internal (or external SCSI) versions of the two drives to be more comparable in speed.

Echo wins on aesthetics. It's a sleek, low, silver rectangle with rounded sides while a VXA external is a big plastic rectangle that's about half the size of a shoebox and more than double the size of the Echo. Both can be mounted horizontally or vertically. Both run with Retrospect 5.5, although OnStream also supplies its own software.

Both drives performed well in my testing, given that when tape and Windows are involved, backups occasionally misfire. Both delivered reliable restores.

Ecrix promises that for the extra money you get greater reliability, faster speeds, and greater capacity--near DLT capability for less money, in other words. My seat-of-the-pants sense was that VXA was indeed the heavier-duty product, but I didn't see any dramatic difference in my testing. A more clear distinction was that Ecrix's design and expansion capabilities were more suited to network backup tasks than the Echo, which is more oriented to desktop and peer-to-peer solutions.

Another factor here is product stability. Choosing a proprietary solution always entails an element of risk by being dependent on one company.

U.S.-based OnStream, Inc. went out of business last spring, and its assets were taken over by Netherlands-based OnStream Data B.V. Product was in scarce supply over the summer. The Echo drives now are back in the retail pipeline, however, and the availability of third-party media supplies is another safeguard.

Ecrix's initial success was in the Macintosh world. But the company has just scored a major breakthrough in the PC arena by signing a deal to supply backup drives for Compaq servers and workstations. The Exabyte merger should also add to stability.

The other thing to bear in mind is that the supply of Travan products is waning, with several companies dropping the technology. Only Imation and Seagate are doing much to bring out new Travan technologies. Accordingly, both OnStream Echo and Ecrix VXA are sensible solutions to backing up modern PCs and workgroup networks without having to pay thousands of dollars for the backup device.

You can reach Al Gordon at:
mailto:al@TheNakedPC.com

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