The selection of the tape drive can be done on the following basis: The First and the important step while selecting a tape drive is to check for storage capacity: The storage capacity is used for the longest highest capacity compatible media. It is expressed in Gigabytes. One Gigabytes of storage capacity is equal to 1000 MB’s. Typically, for normal office document, the data can increase the capacity by 2 to 3 times.

The data is compressed for the files, such as JPEG photos, MPEG videos and other graphical data. If you know how much data you need to write, it is relatively easy to choice to drives with a similar capacity.
Most tape software allows you to span data across multiple tapes. The capacity of the tape needs to equal the amount of data that you wish to write to the tape.

You could back up the data files that have changed during the past month to reduce the number of tapes required. A tape drive has a capacity which is equal to or exceeds that of your entire disk storage capacity makes the job a lot easier. The second thing to be noticed while choosing the tape drive is to find from brochure, how faster the data transfer rate can occur.

There is a wide variation in tape drive storage capacities, and the speed at which the data can be written or read. The data transfer rate is expressed in terms of MB/sec and can be converted to MB/min by simple multiplication. A low cost tape drive can write at less than 1 MB/sec while is very expensive. The amount of data compression can be done is also an important thing to be kept in mind which can direct affect the data transfer rate. If the data compression doubles the drives storage capacity it also doubles the data transfer rate.

The real backup speed is the verify operation. You can perform and verify data comparison. This involves reading all of the data written to the tape and comparing it with the data on the hard disk. In the real world it will take 5 or 6 hours to back up a full 80 GB drive. The tape drive can take many days for back up of 2 or 3 TB server.

The media compatibility of the tape is also very important selection criteria buyers. If you already have a large investment and you don’t want to abandon them, then the most logical upgrade of the drive is to have at least one of media compatible tapes. Quantum has done job of compatibility. The models such as DLT 8000, DLT 2000XT’s, DLT 4000’s and DLT 7000’s can provide good media compatibility. Compatibility with a processing service can also be key criteria. The combined cost of the drive and necessary media is a key decision factor. The cost of the drive is easy to measure.

The cost of media varies when calculated on a cost per GB. DDS 3 tapes store 24 GB and its cost is $6 a piece. The tape cartridges are very expensive and got from a limited number of retailers. The Drive Interface of all tape drives now makes use of one or another form of Small Computer Systems Interface.

The choice should also be made between the three hardware implementations can be very important and many drive models give you a choice of two.SE is the oldest and most common interface. It consists of 8 or 16 data lines and a number of control lines each having one active wire which is having common ground. High Voltage Differential supports much longer cables and is less sensitive to electrical noise. Most tape libraries and tape drive arrays use drives with HVD interfaces.

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