I haven't used tapes on a linux machine, but I am using retrospect on a mac
with a ADIC FastStor ( 7 DLT autoloader type 4000 ).  It works amazingly well
and it is very fast.  We use it to back up our server over the network.  I
get about 100mb/s out of it on average.
I know this is a little OT but I would really recommend a DLT system.  Less
prone to problems and much faster.  Also a lot larger especially compressed.

sim

Andy Zbikowski wrote:

> I'd go with a DDS3 or maybe a DDS4. DDS3 is 12gb uncompressed. I've seen a
> few drives on eBay for under you budget. You can't go wrong with DLT IV
> (someone [Sony?] released SuperDLT not to long ago, but I haven't looked
> into it yet.), except for price.
>
> It all depends on how much you're backing up, and how often. For me a DDS3
> would be fine. Incremental backup would probably get me by on DDS2 after
> doing a full backup to a DDS3 tape. (For my one home box anyway.)
>
> I haven't had much experience with backups beyond DDS and DLT. I know
> someone who has plenty of horror stories to go along with their Echo
> soultion though.
>
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