I'd add verified working drives, if I were you. Offers to purchase off eBay aren't really going to be that useful - you never know what state the drives are in. They could kill the tapes. Just be careful - some of those tapes may not have an obvious drive, although the models I gave you should work.
I've got an HP Colorado tape drive (don't recall what model off hand) that I have somewhere. If one is needed I will happily dig it out and check on its condition.
I have 2 or 3 DDS3 DAT internal SCSI drives lying around somewhere. Send me a PM if you need them. Glad to help
T range is Travan / QIC - don't think there were any QIC tapes. It's mostly DDS/DDS2 with some original AIT tapes.
I've got a few spare tape drives, though I can't vouch for how well they work as I've not got the media to test on them. I'd be glad to contribute if any are needed: 2x HP SureStore DAT24 Model C1555D An IBM branded QIC-2GB drive Model TDC4220 An External SyQuest Technologies 200MB C Model 200EXT (Part number S914127-001) A Sony DDS drive Model SDT-5000 Various iomega solutions (Jaz 2GB Model V2000SI and a few Zip 250s) 2 Panasonic DVD-RAM drives (one is Model LF-D201) Various LS120 drives I know the last few aren't tape drives, but they're uncommon-ish backup solutions and figured I'd toss them in in case there was need.
DAT24i - umm, let me think about that one QIC - no good Syquest 200Mb - no good SDT-5000 - DDS2, yep JAZ/ZIP/LS120/DVD-RAM - no good Are you based in the US? The other drives are, of course, good for something, just not much help in this case.
Miami, Florida, USA. I figured most wouldn't be good for this (based on the pictures in the other thread but for all I know someone says 'I have some SNES material on Syquest tapes! =P). I'd be totally willing to part with my SDT-5000. It's missing the faceplate, but was pulled from a working system. I haven't tested it simply because I haven't had any media.
I have a Internal Sony SDT-9000 pulled from one of my old servers. for more info http://sony.storagesupport.com/product/17
HP surestore dat 40. DDS4, external, SCSI, internal power supply. It worked when I liquidated it from my old job (they upgraded, asked me to trash a bunch of stuff - I tripped and this landed in my trunk instead) however I haven't been able to test it here at home as I don't own the correct cable. I need to order one to make sure it isn't hungry.
Just saw this thread and forum, so I apologize that I'm late here. I don't personally have any of the tape units needed, but I live near a surpluss store which has at tons of old 90s-00s stuff, and can probably find drives and blank media to test said drives with. I'll be heading out there sometime this week to troll through their collection and make a few phone calls to see if I can track down some of these drives. As seen in another thread, I'd recommend BackupExec as well, reads like 10 different formats, and I used it when I worked IT professionally. It might however be a very good idea once a known working drive is located that we do a binary dump of at least one tape (probably using a LInux or BSD liveCD, dd, and a bit of luck), and can look at tearing the data out that way. When I did backups, I often didn't do compression on the backups due to speed issues (easier to just pop an additional tape in when we did full backups). If these backups are not compressed, it should be possible to simply dump the raw data out with a handmade tool if we can locate an index of the files on one of the tapes. This is of course if BackupExec fails to restore the data.
I've got a DLT 4th generation drive in pretty good order (can't test without tapes). Also a SCSI-3 Adapter (If needed), and all the wrong cables.
Simply out of curiosity (I'm certainly not trying to "stir the pot" if this is a touchy subject), what's the status on this project? Is the project still trying to obtain the correct drives for tape archival? I understand if it's simply an issue of free time; I'm really just curious to know where things have been left at.
Got an Ultrium-2 at work that I could use to restore data off tapes from. Equally got an old ultrium that takes DAT-sized tapes at work that i could poss donate. pm me if interested
