Onstream SC30-01 30GB Internal SCSI Digital Tape Drive

Other products by OnStream

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B0000300C9
• Item model number: SC30-01
• Average Customer Review: No customer reviews yet. Be the first.
• Date first available at Amazon.com: September 4, 1999

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

The OnStream SC30-01 internal SCSI digital tape drive with OnStream Echo software for Windows is ideal for power workstations. The SC30-01 SCSI drive works in Windows just like any other drive, giving you access to files from any application. With up to 30 GB of capacity per cartridge, you can forget about high media costs or the inconvenient "backup shuffle" you get with other removable storage products. And you can finally back up today's large hard drives on one cartridge.

From Winmag®

OnStream's tape drive and Echo software lets you use part of the tape for backup and part as a hard drive. And the backup files can be recovered using an Explorer-like interface.

We tested preproduction IDE and SCSI models of the 30GB drive. The SCSI version backed up at 81.4MBpm without compression and 40MBpm with compression. The IDE drive tallied 44.8MBpm without compression and 32.3MBpm with compression. Treating the unit as a hard drive, our copy tests ran at 76MBpm for the SCSI unit, and 52.9MBpm for the IDE model.

Restoration was quick, too; speed depends on the position of the file on the tape, but wait times were typically less than one minute.

Two minor liabilities: Shutdown takes longer if the tape isn't rewound, sometimes adding three to four minutes to the process; and the Echo backup software can't do filtering (backing up all DOC files on the C: drive, for instance).

OnStream also offers 50GB SCSI and 30GB parallel port models. Based on the flexibility and excellent performance as a tape drive and "occasional" hard disk, we're placing the SC30 30GB SCSI model on our WinList.