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“To DLT or not to DLT – that is the question”
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of unreadable DVD-Rs, Or just to buy a darn DLT drive? That is the question.
I had come to believe that I could get away with supplying DVD-Rs to the Replicators AND Duplicators. But now that I’m seeing projects that take more than the 4-something gB of a DVD-R, I am beginning to wonder. DRW has told me that some replicators will accept hard drives, but the supplier I’ve been dealing with will not.
So I am starting to look at eBay, and would like advice about which DLT to buy, etc. Anyone with an opinion is very welcome to comment, please.
— Bob C
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7 Replies
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Yep- many will indeed take a hard drive. Or DVD-DL media. Either cheaper and much easier than DLT- but no Macrovision if that matters.
Noah
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We initially sent DVD-R masters to the replication house and were getting about 1% or so returns-problems. When we switched to DLt masters the problems have almost totally disappeared and are very rare.
Quantum made all the original DLt IV drives. I think it is the 4000 that is the best deal cost wise. DLt I drives are not the same, so don’t get one.
PS I’m not a serial killer, my keyboard is broken so it will on do small t’s.
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I’ve been looking on eBay and finding plenty of candidates, but without software. Do you need any special backup software for these drives?
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Perhaps I’m making too much of this, but I’m seeing all sorts of DLT drives and tapes, 20/40 gb, 35/70 gb, etc. Does that matter, or is any DLT cartridge going to be acceptable to replicators?
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Aloha Bob,
There are lots of new flavors of DLT that are more expensive and have higher densities. I don’t know how many replicators have moved up to these. However all will take 20/40 tapes, but these days most tapes are 20/40/80 or something like that. Anyway, you can get by with the older, much less expensive drives that wrote 20/40 tapes rather than a new DLT. Again DLT1 is not the same format as the other DLTs. DLT III is way old so don’t go there. DLT IV is what you are looking for and almost all of these are Quantum 4000 drives but many are hidden under other brand names.
And to clarify, writing a discimage file to a DLT is not like a backup job. Backup software doesn’t do this. The best thing is if your DVD authoring software supports DLT Tape drives so you directly write to it just like you would a DVD-R.
Ken
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When I eBay for DLT IV I see tons of 40/80 tape cartridges on offer. Are you saying that a tape drive that says 20/40 will accept these cartridges?
Again, forgive the total ignorance, and thanks for your prior explanations.
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They should work fine. Our first stuff we did was on 35/75 and now we are using 20/40 35/70 40/80 Tapes which I assume are really 40/80 tapes. You get lots of tape you never use as you only put 4 GB to tape on each one. So sort of expensive ($30 vs $1) compared to DVD-R, but like I said, we actually saw the results.
Aloha,
Ken
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