[vox-tech] Effective home disk backup systems

[vox-tech@lists.lugod.org]

Hi all,

  This is an opinion gathering session I've not done any research now.
I am going to be in the market for a home disk backup system in the next
few days (1).  I'm wondering what technologies people around here use,
would like to use, and what would be recommended.

  I imagine that practically nothing is going to meet my criteria, 
so don't bother filtering in advance, just throwing them out so
you know my opinion of 'effective'.

My 'effective' criteria: 
- Cost           (< $1000 for backup unit, < $1 per GiB of media)
- Speed          (5-15+ MiB/s)
- Automatable    (backup media large enough to backup reasonable amount 
                  of data, say 20 GiB)
- Reusable Media (prefer not to have stacks and stacks of backup media 
                  from ages ago).
- Relocatable    (easy to move the backup system between machines)


This I don't particularly care about:
- Need not be online, would prefer to be able to lock away in a safe.
- Seek times can be horrible, in the few minute range.


Backup options I vaguely know of starting out:
- CDRW
- CDR
- DVD RAM
- DVD RW
- DVD R
- 8mm tape 'DLT'
- 4mm tape 'DAT'
- Buy more hard drives
- Iomega 'Jaz' drive

    Thanks,
      Mike

1: One of my IBM Deskstar drives started making rude noises this 
   morning, when the morning updatedb ran.  It has 4 drive errors 
   logged into the SMART log... it claims only 510 Power On Hours
   but it claims no relocated sectors.
     I have too much important information on this drive to consider 
   losing it, so I'm going to have to take the drive offline until 
   I find a backup system and/or a replacement drive.