Re: Tape/DVD Backup Suggestions?

Yes, I'm a little wary of hard disk based systems as my sole backup. I
prefer something that allows me to have at least 2-3 different media
backups (e.g. one this week, one last week, and one the week before last).
Also, I like to be able to take a copy of the media home just because I'm
paranoid that the lab will burn down or something silly like that ;>)

I've been looking at the Exabyte systems which hold 80G/160G and write at
about 10G/hour. Anyone have experience with these? How onerous is it to
look at the table of contents or restore a specific file from these tapes?

-Tony

At 11:35 PM 7/17/02 +0100, strange(at)nsk(dot)yi(dot)org wrote:
>On Wed, Jul 17, 2002 at 04:48:10PM -0500, Nathan Mueller wrote:
> > > Are there
> > > systems like with these features that could handle say 20 Gigs per
> > > media?
> >
> > Where I work we just started using a new disk based backup system that
> > we wrote in-house. Disk is a little bit cheaper then tape -- plus much
> > faster. Another bonus is that your compression rate does not depend on
> > how fast your data is flowing. I'd suggest you buy a few 160GB IDE
> > drives and just dump your data there. It's faster, easier and you don't
> > need to change tapes. If you're interested in the source to our system
> > just let me know.
>
>I advise against hard disk based backups:
>
>It's not cheap, sure, a tape drive is expensive, but the tapes are quite
>cheap.
>
>The cheapness of the tapes allows you to use several for different
>backup strategies (weekly and daily incremental and monthly full backup, for
>example) and to keep older data on saved tapes.
>
>It's easier. There are programs like Arkeia (free for one linux server and
>two clients (win32/linux)), that makes tape and backup management a few
>clicks (but a read of documentation is still needed). As a side note,
>Arkeia supports direct dumping and backup from serveral rdbms, postgresql
>included.
>
>It's more reliable. If the backup disk fails, all backup is lost and its
>substitution an hassle. If a tape breaks you still have the other tapes
>for last week/day/etc.. Still, a tape drive can fail or a tape can screw
>the drive, but I haven't heard of anyone to whom that has happened. In
>hardware world, quality normally comes with an higher price.
>
>That being said, I don't have a tape. Too much for my pocket. :)
>So I made a script that creates, compress, splits and burns backups to
>cds. I'll made a switch to dvds when the price for dvd recorders drops to
>EUR 100 and dvd blank discs to EUR 2...
>
>Your solution is still a valid one, but more a special case for those
>without too much $$...
>
>Regards,
>Luciano Rocha
>
>--
>Consciousness: that annoying time between naps.