[vox-tech] Effective home disk backup systems

Leo Rainer vox-tech@lists.lugod.org
Mon, 01 Apr 2002 14:02:54 -0800


I would vote for a 4mm DAT system. We currently use a DDS-2 system (4 GB
native) to backup our server and have never had a problem with it - it just
keeps on working. I plan to upgrade to a DDS-4 sometime in the future but
all the old tapes will be completely compatible. You can get an internal
DDS-4 for ~$700 and media is <$10 for a 12GB native cartridge. You can also
still use DDS-1 and -2 cartridges which cost ~$4 a piece for backing up
individual machines and projects. It's not the latest technology, but I
like that - it has been around a long time and I expect it will be around
for a while longer.

	...leo

At 01:19 PM 4/1/02 -0500, you wrote:
>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.
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