Backup Solutions

[Neil Watson]

On Thu, Aug 30, 2007 at 04:11:49PM +0000, Christopher Browne wrote:
>You can buy a dozen USB-connected drives with enclosures for about the
>same price as a DAT/AIT drive plus a dozen tapes.  Periodically,
>you'll have to replace disk drives, but the same was true for tapes...

You can stack tapes in boxes and truck them off to Iron Mountain or your
own safety deposit box via your bicycle.  Would you bet your data
integrity and possibly your job on a disk surviving such transport and
environmental hazards?  Hard drives are the most fragile part of any
modern computer.  Suggesting that they be used as portable backup media
is very risky

>> They pay lip service to laws like SOX by storing tapes off site for
>> years.  However, they do not ensure that they have the ability to
>> recover that data from tape when the time comes.  Five years from now
>> will they be able to read the tape or the Exchange 5.5 data stored on
>> it?

>Will they be able to buy a tape drive that can still read the media?

That's by you buy two drives.  Another option is to regularly migrate
old backups to newer media. 

-- 
Neil Watson             | Debian Linux
System Administrator    | Uptime 7 days
http://watson-wilson.ca
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists