Adirian,
I think you missed my point on the removable drive thing for backup. I don't think toting a PC around was part of the picture.
My main point here was...dump the tapes altogether and go for removable drives.
They're so much faster and reliable than tape, and you can restore a file or folder in seconds instead of ... a half-hour?.
Linux now supports hot removable media on USB 2.0 interface adapters. Using an 80 or 120 gig ATA hard drive ($105-$150 mail order), a $45 external USB 2 hard drive case and a simple good-ole Unix style script run on cron, you can create a very inexpensive, dependable, fast and simple backup system that can't be beat at any price.
Fast - copies files at breakneck speed (480Mbps I/O interface) in read-only mode, allowing you to copy many kinds of open files too.
Simple - unmount the drive, power it off, unplug it, replace it with the next one in rotation, power it on, and mount it. Voi-la. That's it. No loading and no loading delicate autoloader magazines.
Easy - anyone can recover a file, simply by copying from the backup mount to original location. Ta-da! No training needed, and no special software.
Portable - slip the case into a padded carrier, and take the drive off-site. Return the next day with the one it replaced, and return it to the rotation pool.
Cheap - buy five drives and cases for just $750-$975, less than the cost of most 24 gig tape drives - and that's before you've bought the tapes!
Long Life - the right hard drives come with a three year warranty, as opposed to a one-year warranty on a tape drive, and one-year on tape media. Hard drive life expectancy is 5 years. Try getting a tape drive to last that long.
No Cleaning - no dirt - enough said.
No Software to Buy - write your own script to selectively backup what you need. You can even pause, copy out and resume SQL data bases too. Try that with other programs!
Archives - don't erase old files, just leave them there. This media is much larger than your file server store. Only changed and new files get copied. This lets you recover those tax records accounting accidentally erased (and of course were not archived) six months ago! Try that with tape!
Better Environmental - hard drives can take the heat and cold. Tapes can't.
Bigger Capacity - a tape loader or DLT system capable of storing 100 gig costs between $2800 and $7,000 - once again, not counting the media. And 100 gig DLT media runs $100 right there.
It Can Grow - need a larger store...get this...use two at a time! So this solution expands and scales nicely.
Read Elsewhere - install a $40 USB 2 controller in another machine and you can read/write/format the media there too! No expensive drive to buy or to move/reinstall when upgrading your server.
I don't know what all this fuss is about. For my money, tapes are not the way to go. They just don't make sense.
dave...