Re: GSTape still available?

[bird@MCS.COM (J. L. Walters)]

In article <55365t$3dg@bmerhc5e.bnr.ca>,
Jeffrey Robertson <jeffr@bnr.ca> wrote:
>In article <327430c1.146814@personalnews.germany.eu.net>,
>S�nke Behrens <s_behrens@emulex.com> wrote:

>> anyone know whether GSTape by Tim Grams can still be bought? I tried
>> an e-mail to tgrams@genie.com but got no reply ... maybe Tim has
>> switched providers?

I looked on GEnie about two weeks ago and he wasn't there as far as I
could tell. I need to look at my DB to see what topic he had so I can
see if it is canceled. I'll try and post a follow up here in a day or
so.

> Well, I just checked Four11, and I got the following three addresses:

What is that and how does one check with it?

> Tim    Grams   tgrams@iadfw.net             
> Tim    Grams   102452.3100@Compuserve.Com   Anchorage, Alaska
> Tim T. Grams   73537.2601@Compuserve.Com    Garland, Texas
> I'd try mailing them all...

I'd bet on the both the Texas one since he is/was in Texas and the
first one since his GEnie name was tgrams.

It is a cool program, however, I think I'd recommend the Zip drive
from Iomega as an alternative for several reasons.

1. The price $199 (and maybe a continuing $50 rebate so then $149).

2. The disks cost approx $15/ea for 100 meg and you can have three
   partitions, two 32Meg and one 31.9Meg

3. Doing a vol copy with my Zip 8/64 takes four minutes. Doing a 
   file copy takes 17 minutes (that damned third partition not
   being 32Meg is a hastle.)

Why I don't like GSTape

1. The tapes are somewhat hard to get and somewhat expensive. For my
   tape unit they hold 60Meg (as I remember), so you can't put two
   full 32 meg partitions on one tape unless one or more is not full.

2. If you put more than one partition on the tape it takes forever to
   write the second and subsequent partitions because Tim always
   rewinds the tape to the beginning and goes forward looking for the
   end of the first, second,... partition so he can begin writing the
   current partition. (There was talk a year or so ago that he might
   change this scheme.)

3. Don't shoot me if I'm wrong, however, it was my understanding that
   you had to format a tape before writing multiple partitions to it
   e.g., you couldn't take a previous tape and tell GSTape to start
   over at the beginning and put multiple partitions on it. You could
   tell it to do this if you had just one partition so that is what I
   did, one partition per tape, however, you had to be alert to tell
   GSTape that this is what you wanted for the first tape you did
   during a session. After that, it defaulted to this mode for all
   other tapes made during that session. I'd of preferred a preferance
   that let me set this as the default mode.

Why I liked GSTape:

1. Mainly because Tim is such a class act when it comes to supporting
   folks. I learned a lot by reading his section on GEnie.

2. When it comes to restoring a single file, a subdirectory, or the 
   entire partition it was obvious (after RTFM), what you should do.
   I admit that the first time Tim saved my buns I was ready to
   dive into the bomb shelter if my HD blew up. Not to worry, GSTape
   came through.

I guess the bottom line is, I'd like to find a cheap source of tapes
and use both GSTape and my Zip drive to back stuff up.

Hope this has confused the issue enough for you ;-)
-- 
	Joe Walters:  bird@mcs.com or J.L.Walters@genie.com
	To know and not to do is to not yet know