Ray Arachelian <sunder@brainlink.com> writes:
Passphrases can be memorized. 4mm DAT tapes hold several gigs and are tiny. Ever see one? Fits in your pocket. It's smaller that an audio cassette. Fairly easy to guard, but, if your data is backed up in encrypted form (cyphertext), and not clear text, you don't even need to bother protecting the tape. (That is unless your backup software uses a weak cypher as most tend to do.) [FYI: Your knowledge of tape technologies is severly lacking. 4mm tapes hold 2-4Gb. Exabytes 5Gb-10Gb. Mamouth Exabytes (same size as 8mm camcorder video tapes, smaller than audio cassettes) hold as much as 40Gb in a very small form factor.]
I'm actually thinking of getting a pair of 4mm tape drives to replace my existing backup system (very old drives that use DC 600As; only .25GB / drive, pretty slow, no NT drivers; time to upgrade) I wonder: if the data is well-encrypted, wouldn't it make the compression pretty ineffective? Also: can somebody recommend good, fast 4MM drives that go inside a PC and work off a SCSI controller, and are supported by Windows NT and 95 with no special drivers? (I don't care about OS/2 and Linux support) [I guess I'll burn the old media or something. :-) I still have about 3 cubic feet of 5.25" floppies that I don't know how to discard] --- Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps