next topic »

[on:]

Hi, right now I have to drive over to work every weekend and change the tape on the server. I was thinking why not automate it.

The Tape Drive is external and mounted on a rack. At first I was thinking of using the claw to grab the exciting tape from the tape drive and put it on the side and then grab the  new tape and put it in the tape drive. But I am not sure if I will be able to get the precision from the robotic claw as the tape slot is very tight.

I was wondering if anyone else has attempted this before and found a better way of doing it. I would love to hear any new ideas. Thanks!

[Reply #1 on:]

This reminds me of the sort of thing people have done with Lego Mindstorm NXT, which I've never played with, but I get the impression some of these solutions must have taken a huge amount of effort to get working reliably.

If time is money and reliability is important it might be more sensible to buy a commercial system, but you'd need to spend thousands of dollars - it would work out cheaper to simply pay somebody nearby to go into the office and swap the tape for you:

http://content.dell.com/us/en/gen/storage-solutions-tape-backup

[Reply #2 on:]

Thank Peter, yea won't be able to spend that kind of money for a commercial system. I will look into the Lego's see if something can be built that is cheap. Again it doesn't need to be that reliable as I can always drive to work and put the tape in. I am leaning more and more towards the claw. I haven't really played around with it,  I can even mount a webcam to guide the claw with a joystick or something. I guess I will have to build a claw first and then see how much precision I can get out of it. Thanks for the suggestions.

[Reply #3 on:]

If time is money and reliability is important it might be more sensible to buy a commercial system, but you'd need to spend thousands of dollars - it would work out cheaper to simply pay somebody nearby to go into the office and swap the tape for you:

That assumes there is money to hire a person part time.  Often times there are different buckets of money for employees and for infrastructure (or the OP may be doing it on his own dime to avoid the cost/hassle of driving in).

Unless you are writing encrypted dump tapes, having some random person changing tapes can open up a security hole.

[Reply #4 on:]

Hi, right now I have to drive over to work every weekend and change the tape on the server. I was thinking why not automate it.

The Tape Drive is external and mounted on a rack. At first I was thinking of using the claw to grab the exciting tape from the tape drive and put it on the side and then grab the  new tape and put it in the tape drive. But I am not sure if I will be able to get the precision from the robotic claw as the tape slot is very tight.

I was wondering if anyone else has attempted this before and found a better way of doing it. I would love to hear any new ideas. Thanks!

Easier solution...two (or more) tape drives and use an Arduino to switch between them.