Re: Backup question
From: Moe Trin (ibuprofin_at_painkiller.example.tld)
Date: 06/30/05
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Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2005 19:50:44 -0500
In the Usenet newsgroup alt.computer.security, in article
<42c2755e$0$14024$dbd4b001@news.wanadoo.nl>, Joachim Schipper wrote:
>I'm going to assume you want reliable offsite storage.
Well, "reliable" should be a given - "offsite storage" is desired if
you want to protect against dangers that might take out the local area,
whether fire, flood, storm, earthquake, or that rampaging herd of
rabid yaks.
>Tapes are a good solution if you do a *lot* of backups - the cost per GB
>of storage is about as good as you can get .
and given reasonable care and preventive maintenance, they are fairly
reliable.
>If you are willing to buy tape drives from eBay and the like, though,
>prices can be pretty acceptable. Think $ 40 for a SCSI adapter (if you
>do not have it already), $ 70 for a DDS-2 drive (4 GB/tape, '8 GB
>compressed') and something like $5 a tape.
I'd be more than a little nervous buying discarded drives on eBay. While
there are people who buy the very latest gizmo because it's the very latest,
most people replace hardware when it's no longer adequate for their needs
or when it's starting to get expensive to maintain. That's how I got 3
Exabyte 8505s. I kept them for 18 months before I couldn't afford to
repair them.
>The *other* thing worth considering that backups to tape are most useful
>if you can read the tape somewhere after your main computer has been
>thoroughly destroyed by, for example, stampeding yaks.
Yes - there have been many horror stories like that. Don't forget NASA
with an enormous tape library, and in some cases, no working tape drives
left that can read those old data tapes. I ran into that buzz-saw in
1983.
>Burning to CD is easy, but not a good long-term solution - it's
>inconvenient, as it'll take about 15 CD's to do a full backup, and CD-Rs
>are hideously expensive
Well, they're better than QIC, but that's not saying much.
>[I dislike them, partly for no good reason, so do not take this at face
>value. A lot of people happily back up to CD-RW, and presumably those
>backups remain restorable...]
at least over the short time. However, how many people actually verify
that those backups actually will restore. Horror stories abound!
>External hard drives are another option, but aren't exactly 'removable
>media' - the main effect of which is that, though you *could* place them
>offsite, you likely won't.
Agreed. They also have the 'connector life' problem. The normal "DB-25"
style connector (actually MIL-C-24308) has a "required" life of 5,000
mate/demate cycles, and at one cycle per day, you are talking 13 years of
use, which should be adequate.
>The last option, of course, is to get the cheapest computer you can
>find, put a decent 40 or 80 GB drive
or larger
> in it, and synchronize data
>nightly. Place it somewhere it'll not be bothered too much, and be sure
>to use encryption while sending your stuff over the net. You should be
>able to get the computer for free by asking around, so this will just
>cost you a single drive and some time. Be sure to place it with a friend
>or somesuch.
To make the friend more cooperative, install another drive on your
computer, and offer to be the 'off-site' repository for the friend's data.
Old guy
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