Re: Backup question

From: Moe Trin (ibuprofin_at_painkiller.example.tld)
Date: 06/29/05 

Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2005 19:36:14 -0500

In the Usenet newsgroup alt.computer.security, in article
<d9rkbd$9k7$1@home.itg.ti.com>, News wrote:

>Ive got a 120G harddrive with about 40G worth of files for my photography /
>graphics files. These are very important to me.

"How important are they?" Translation - what is it worth to you? Side
question, what are you guarding against? Hardware failure? Software failure?
Theft? Fire/Flood/Earthquake? Fumbling fingers?

>I use Retrospect to guard against problems, but obviously need a backup
>to another drive or archive on CD-ROM.

40 Gigs can't be shoehorned into a CD-ROM. How often do these files change?

>I am a student also, so cost per MB is important too.

What are you guarding against? At the least, you would want a removable
media of sufficient capacity (so that it can be elsewhere when your main
computer is crushed by stampeding yaks). Thing is, 120 Gig capacity is
huge, and even 40 Gigs is going to be expensive. Tape drives of suitable
capacity (DDS/4 mm can do 20 Gigs normal "40 Gigs" compressed - the later
unlikely if the data is already in a compressed format) are very expensive,
but we've had good luck with Seagates. DLTs are even more expensive, but
the media is "comparable" in cost. Avoid Travan drives - reliability.

For a home user WHO IS SKILLED with hardware, a reasonable solution might
be to TEMPORARILY install a second hard drive of suitable capacity, and
copy the files to that drive, then remove it and store it in "a safe place".
The TWO problems with that is the risk of constant fiddling with the disk
and guts of the computers, AND the fact that the connectors have a finite
life (admittedly measured in the hundreds of mate/demate cycles).

If not skilled with hardware, another solution would be to obtain a small
cheap computer with that large drive, and Ethernet cards for both the main
and this backup computer. Bring the backup out of storage, connect it to the
other computer, do a net copy, then back into safe storage she goes.

What ever you do, verify that your backup program is actually creating
backups that you can restore. You wouldn't be the first person who
_thought_ they had backups.

        Old guy

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