DLT Drive recommendation for Mac?

[Dave Friend]

Quantum 4000 or 7000 models will do nicely. The older (and slower) 4000’s can be found used at very reasonable prices.

[Sarahxp]

Thanks for the suggestion! Are you sure this drive is mac compatible. The specs I found online say pc and unix. Thanks! S.

[Dave Friend]

Sarah,

“Are you sure this drive is mac compatible.”
We have used Quantum DLT drives on our mac (G4, OS9) authoring workstations for years. (We are authoring with the old Sonic DVD Producer system.)

I do not see why these drives would not work on G5s and OS X. They are standard SCSI devices and I am not aware of any firmware or other factors that differentiate mac vs. “other” systems models.

If you haven’t done so already, perhaps you can find peace of mind by asking your question on the COW’s DVD Studio Pro forum.

Dave

[Ken Hon]

Sarah,

Just to reinforce Dave’s point, SCSI devices are really operating system neutral, that is all of the operating systems support them. For a DLT drive to work, you must have a software program that supports the drive to do a specific job. DLT tape is not like a hard drive, it has a very specific data structure that must be written to it for DVD replication. Virtually all major programs including DVD SP support this write structure which is why it’s become a defacto authoring standard. Now, for the drives. All of the early DLT IV drives (which is what you want, DLT 3 will not work, nor will DLT 1 which is a totally different tape format) were built by Quantum and rebranded. So any DLT IV 4000 model is a Quantum and will work just fine. Not sure about who besides Quantum makes 7000 models, but all of those will work fine too, just more expensive due to higher capacity (which you don’t need). The one compatibility hang up is the type of SCSI connector on the back of the drive. There are at least 3 (and maybe more) types you are likely to encounter. The oldest is the very slow 25 pin, then 50 pin, and finally 68 pin connectors. The drive will work with any of these, but you will probably need a 68 pin connector for any modern LVD SCSI card in you computer. It is also very easy to change the connectors if you get a drive with several of them. You just pop the cover and replace a ribbon cable and the connector, something like 4 or 8 screws, can’t remember exactly. One last tip, the DLT drives are very slow devices and will slow down the RW speed on any RAID arrays etc you have on that SCSI channel. So only turn it on when you need to write a DLT tape or it will slow down the RAID throughput on your system (if you have SCSI Raid Arrays).

Aloha,

Ken

Aloha,

Ken

[Sarahxp]

Thank you all. this is very usefull. We are currently looking at a couple of Quantum 4000. Thanks! Sarah.