Backup Solutions

Kevin Cozens kevin-4dS5u2o1hCn3fQ9qLvQP4Q at public.gmane.org
Fri Aug 31 16:19:38 UTC 2007


Neil Watson wrote:
> I agree.  I would never recommend consumer grade tape drives.  Yes
> reliable tape drives do cost quite a bit.

How much would you need to spend to get a "reliable" tape drive for backing up 
data?

Quite a few years ago I had been using 4mm DAT tape drives that had a SCSI 
interface. I had an HP 4mm DAT. It didn't last all that long (a year or so?) 
before it died. The replacement drive also died after an even short period of 
time but with a different failure. I was able to take the mechanics from one 
drive and the electronics from the other to make a "new" drive. It also died 
after a short while. The Toshiba 4mm DAT that was purchased for backing up a 
couple of SGI computers also didn't seem to last very long.

The two HP drives retailed for about $800 IIRC. The company I was working for 
paid more than that for the Toshiba drive. None of the drives saw heavy use. 
Backups only took one or two 2G tapes and were mainly used about once a month. 
AFAIK, I never had a problem with the tapes. Just the drives. I no longer 
trust a tape system for backups.

More recently I was using DVD's for backups. The main issue has been trying to 
find useable (or decent) Linux backup software that can use DVD's for the 
external storage medium. The other issue is that the amount of data to be 
backed up is starting to out pace the storage capacity of DVD's. At first, two 
DVD's were enough but no longer.

My current machine has two drives configured as RAID1. I also just recently 
picked up a removable harddrive for backups.

Someone suggested keeping a spare drive so that you can do restores later on 
in case the drives are no longer available down the road. Since the interface 
to the computer (SCSI, IDE, SATA, ...) can change over time and older 
interfaces may become obsolete, it may be necessary to keep a spare computer 
with the required interface around as well as the drive.

-- 
Cheers!

Kevin.

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