[vox-tech] Effective home disk backup systems

[ME]

Have used lots of various kinds of storage systems. 

I backup multiple SCSI enabled Hardware based RAID-5 Dell PowerVault
160+Gb arrays, and have found the DLT drives to be the most robust pieces
of equipment for backup.

Those DAT drives are too tempermental, and require head cleaning far too
often for me. They are also more limited on storage space.

Though DLT are more expensive, grab a SCSI3 Ultra LVD based card and add a
fast DLT drive and put it on its own SCSI bus and watch the bits fly to
tape. You will also be able to see the backups complete long before the
night is over. ;-)  Much faster than DAT and capacity for more data is
greater.

All of our new servers now use DLT. The few remaining DAT based drives on
server will eventually be migrated to DLT.

Comments:
: CDRW
Slow. Mostly internal. Mostly IDE, Violates "easily moved between
systems", not enough space to meet requirment slisted above.

: CDR
Slow. Mostly internal. Mostly IDE, Violates "easily moved between systems"
systems", not enough space to meet requirment slisted above.

: DVD RAM
Slow. Mostly internal. Mostly IDE, Violates "easily moved between systems"
systems", not enough space to meet requirment slisted above.

: DVD RW
Slow. Mostly internal. Mostly IDE, Violates "easily moved between systems"
systems", not enough space to meet requirment slisted above.

: DVD R
Slow. Mostly internal. Mostly IDE, Violates "easily moved between systems"
systems", not enough space to meet requirment slisted above.

: 8mm tape 'DLT'
I like this. Meet most requirement, only cost for initial purchase may not
be met.

: 4mm tape 'DAT'
Faster than many removable opticle disks mentioned above - depending.
Mostly internal though some external, runs close the "edge" of space
requirements for size of backup.

: Buy more hard drives
Way more expensive, but best performance. Good seek time, goo transfer
rates, but not so easily moved between systems.

: Iomega 'Jaz' drive
Ack! Ug! Slowwwwww. Oh, is this parallel? So slow.... IDE/SCSI faster, and
seek time is much faster than tapes, but not reliable enough media for me,
and cost is greater than the $1/Gb. You plan on switching disks all night?

DLT is "better choice" as you will also grow into it. Most DAT drives wont
even backup most present default new home computer's Hard Drive with one
tape. "Unattended backups" (those not requiring you to switch tapes) are
possible,

Witless, brainless cyberzombie but not a slave to the "safe to remove
tape" light on *his* tape drives,
-ME

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On Mon, 1 Apr 2002 msimons@moria.simons-clan.com wrote:
>   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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