dacx Posted February 4, 2002 Report Share Posted February 4, 2002 We have a new Ecrix VXA-1 Firewire backing up our network every night. What is the received wisdom on the subject of (a) leaving the tape in the drive, and ( shutting off the drive in the morning? In other words, is there any benefit to ejecting the tape and shutting off the drive in the morning? Or is it ok the leave the tape in and the drive on more or less 24/7, letting it do its thing every night? What is normal practice here? (Leaving it on would actually seem like *less* wear and tear on the mechanism, superficially. I note that the tape appears to rewind when Retrospect is finished whether I eject the tape or not.) The FM has nothing to say on the subject. The obvious concerns about leaving the drive *on* are i) power consumption ii) heat wear on the tapes and drive iii) moving parts in the drive Thanks, David Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted February 19, 2002 Report Share Posted February 19, 2002 Hi David We also have an Ecrix VXA 1 Firewire and I've been leaving it on. At idle there's very little power consumed and more stable heat/temperature. Mostly though, it means I don't forget to turn it on the night we have a major crash. ;-) oops! I'm curious what computer you are using as a server, is it a firewire machine or are you using a PCI card? Are you having any problems? Cheers Jules Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted February 19, 2002 Report Share Posted February 19, 2002 Hi David We also have an Ecrix VXA 1 Firewire and I've been leaving it on. At idle there's very little power consumed and more stable heat/temperature. Mostly though, it means I don't forget to turn it on the night we have a major crash. ;-) oops! I'm curious what computer you are using as a server, is it a firewire machine or are you using a PCI card? Are you having any problems? Cheers Jules Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ghafer Posted February 20, 2002 Report Share Posted February 20, 2002 I leave mine also, with the tape intact. The ONE time I turned it off, just for one night, I returned the next day to find the tape was completely erased (see other post). I'm not going to repeat anything remotely connected with that night. -- Gary Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dacx Posted February 20, 2002 Author Report Share Posted February 20, 2002 Ecrix tech support eventually got back to me on this one. They made two points: i) Ejecting the tape is a good idea, and they strongly recommend it. They said that important file catalog information is written to the header of the tape when it is ejected, and without that header the drive won't know where files are on the tape. (This may be pertinent to what happened to you.) They suggest telling Retrospect to eject the tape when finished, which is what I have been doing. ii) They didn't have strong opinions about the effect on the life of the drive leaving it on vs. turning it off, so long as it is well-ventilated and not in too warm a room. They also said that they would write up the answers to my questions and post them in their FAQ and readme for the drive. I haven't checked to see if they've done so yet. The backup machine, by the way, is a B&W G3 -- on-board Firewire, not a card. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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