tape drive situation

[Brendan Kiburg <kiburg@npl.uiuc.edu>]

Hi Peter,
  David, Dave and I have been talking about mulan's plans for the 
upcoming run.  It has become clear that mulan has a need for 2 LTO3 tape 
drives at PSI.  They plan to store two copies of the data on independent 
tapes.

  As a result, we need to arrange for a way to transfer the run10 data 
to NCSA.  Since they plan to ship the Illinois LTO3 robot, we would need 
to send the UCB LTO2 drive back to Illinois, or come up with an 
alternative. 

  Is it convenient (and safe) to ship the LTO2 drive to Illinois now and 
then back to PSI next year?  Or should we consider buying an LTO3 drive 
now for our future runs?  If we bought an LTO3 drive now that is 
compatible with our 30 tape robot, mulan could commision it this run and 
we could avoid shipping drives back and forth.

  We should probably talk about this tomorrow at the teleconference so 
we can make a decision before the upcoming shipments between PSI and 
Illinois.

Best Regards,
Brendan