Re: Backup media; comments would be appreciated.

From: Al Dykes (adykes_at_panix.com)
Date: 12/26/03 

Date: 25 Dec 2003 22:00:34 -0500

In article <BvGdnfsRFv4yFXaiRVn-hw@giganews.com>,
Chuck Bridgeland <chuckbri at computerdyn dot com> wrote:
>On Thu, 25 Dec 2003 11:05:25 -0500, Gaetan Martineau
><gmartiPASDESPAM@mediom.qc.ca> wrote:
>
>> I am thinking about a USB ZIP IOMEGA 750 Mbytes external drive as a
>> device for backing up data for a small home network (backing up Windows
>> as well as Linux partitions). Thanks for comments about the following
>> ideas of mine:
>
>How much do you have to back up?
>
>> - was thinking about a Seagate travan Tape. BUT: Seems expensive and I
>> have never see one installed or functionning. It seems a bit of a risky
>> investment. (?)
>
>Your basic tape drive. They should not be a problem, but probably won't
>last long past the end of the warranty, in my experience.
>

Are you backing up for archival purposes or just crash recovery ?

If you are putting data away for record keeping purposes "odd" devices
like travan, the tapes are expensive and you may use a bunch of them,
and you may have problems buying a tape drive years from now. Rember
that you need to be able to run the backup/restore software that made
the tape (or a forward-compatable version). Using CDRs with standard
file systems meands you won't need special software, and I'll bet that
you will be able to get a reader decades from now. Pay attention to
aging issues for CDR media. This is easy to address.

>> - CD-Rom seems a bit lousy for backing up data. (?)
>
>Not really. Look into the cdbackup package. It allows you to pipe the
>output of a traditional backup utility like tar directly to CDR. It works,
>and media is _way_ cheaper than Zip disks.
>
>I currently backup a bit over a gb, to 2 CDR disks, once per week, using tar
>and cdbackup. I have not had any problem restoring data.
>
>
>--
> cats are too intelligent to leave witnesses
> Chuck Bridgeland, chuckbri at computerdyn dot com
> 

-- 
Al Dykes
-----------
adykes@panix.com