By "average access time", we assume that you mean the average transfer rate.
Measuring the average access time for a tape drive would make little sense,
since it's not a random access device. If one were to test this, it could take
a very, very long time.
Apple does not publish any official numbers for this specification, but we were
able to achieve .95MB per minute using Tape Backup 40SC version 2.0.1. This
rating was calculated without the time required to rewind the tape at the
beginning and end of the backup. Only the speed of writing to tape for a 20MB
volume backup was used.
Backing up files is considerably slower and varies depending on the sizes and
numbers of files. Third-party backup programs that are compatible with our
tape drive are faster in file-by-file mode than Tape Backup 40SC 2.0.1.
Tape Backup 40SC cannot be mounted on the desktop. The Tape Disk INIT was
designed solely for single-file recovery from backups created with the volume
backup option. It was not created to provide another backup option, and will
not perform this function, unless a volume backup already exists for it to work
with. This is documented in the "Apple Tape Backup 40SC Owner's Guide."
SuperMac Technologies has released their equivalent of Tape Disk named
TapeDriver. It appears to work with the Apple Tape Backup 40SC to allow
mounting the tape on the desktop, even if the tape doesn't contain a volume
backup. It is not compatible with Tape Backup 40SC 2.0.1 volume backups,
though, and asks to erase any tape inserted that contains one. The INIT is
available on AppleLink by following this path:
3rd Party Connection
Third Party Software Updates
SuperMac
Mass Storage Support Files
TapeDriver
The two programs that we tested and found to be compatible with the Apple Tape
Backup 40SC are Retrospect (Dantz Development Corp) and FastBack II (Fifth
Generation Systems, Inc). Contact their vendors for more information. For
more details, search the Tech Info library under company names for details.