Well I'm very happy with my ATAPI internal IDE REV drive. It is fast
and (so far) reliable. Bear in mind that I have only had the drive 4
weeks which is not long. So I can't comment on long term reliability.
The drive has been powered up 24/7 for all that time in my server.
It is also very quiet in operation which is good for me as my computer
room is next to the bedroom and some tape backup devices are really
loud (e.g. DLT).
I am moving over from my 15/30GB Onstream tape drive (due to the
demise of Onstream) to my REV drive. Full backups on my Onstream take
9.5 hours (my full backup runs to about 11GB). On the REV drive 2.5
hours and most of that is CPU bound software compression in Dantz
Retrospect and Dantz doing its catalog building.
I can get one full backup and 6 incremental backups on one cart (i.e.
a whole week of backups). I replace the cart each week with the old
cart being taken offsite until needed again.
I am very pleased with my purchase and don't regret buying the REV
drive. As to price, the drive itself is MUCH cheaper than tape drives
and the carts cost about the same as DLT IV tape (at least here in the
UK). The advantage over tape is that it is random access so restoring
an individual file is almost instantaneous, no waiting for the tape to
spool (one of my pet hates about tape). Apparently Iomega has stated
that cart prices will come down over time.
The carts are very small, 2.5 inches square and 1/2 inch thick. I've
tested write speeds and got a figures of between 18 and 22MB per
second.
If you want a backup solution with offsite backup (which is why people
use tape rather than spare HDs or RAID) and the 35/70GB (I don't
believe the 90GB claim) capacity is large enough for you then I'd say
"go for it".
Dantz uses the drive perfectly well as a backup device.
In Windows, the REV drive appears as just another drive. You can use
it like a normal HD using Windows explorer. The Iomega drive provides
a right-click menu for formatting, password protecting and write
protecting the discs. As I use Dantz I don't use the copy of Iomega's
Automatic Backup Pro so I can't comment on that. The drive also comes
with a special copy of Ghost 2003 for REV drives.
The drive will fit in a standard 3.5" floppy bay but is also shipped
with a 5.25" adapter which is easy to fit (and unfit again) and looks
good). They only come in black though so it looks a bit odd in my
beige PC.
Apparently you can also boot from the REV drive but I haven't tried
this as it's not a function I need.
I am currently investigating the use of REVs with VMWare virtual OSs
at work. We could keep a library of various OSs on REV discs and use
them with native file access instead of using VMWare disk images on a
standard HD.
Now if only Iomega could come up with a 70/140GB drive my work would
buy one in an instant to replace the 40/80GB DLT we currently have. My
REV drive is much faster than the DLT tape drive.
I hope this helps.
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