-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Jorge Fábregas wrote:
Hello Guys,
Do anyone of you use any tape drive for personal backup? I personally use a 2nd internal hard-drive where I perform nightly backups but twice a year I backup to offline media (DVD-R DL media)...but right now I'm reaching 100 GB of data...that's a bunch of data to burn! (even if it's dual layer media). I know there are HD and Blu-ray drives but they're too expensive. I think I can get a tape-drive for much mess.
I just would like to know if anyone recommends any particular tape-drive and also what software do you use with it (just plain tar?)
Thanks! Jorge
Having initially used a Tape backup unit I now view tape based backup does have a problems as an approach for a home user. 100Gb tape drives are industrial level backup solutions and are both expensive to run and purchase. Those which come with backup software rarely supply Linux compatible tools. As an industrial solution they are being superseded by SANS style solutions in any case. (There are a number of standalone data servers available on the the market for the consumer and small business marketplace as well now, and these can offer 0.5 to 1 TB of storage for roughly similar costs). An alternative often recommended here is to use an external USB caddy drive with rsync. I personally have reservations about this approach, but see no reason why it should not be a valid option to consider. The main problem with these approaches is that once your tape unit or hard drive becomes toast, is that the backup data is effectively lost or expensive to retrieve (you either need a new tape unit or invest in a new drive and data recovery). Unfortunately, these things usually are discovered to have failed or fail when you most need them. For a reliable backup one needs multiple copies of the data (preferably in multiple locations). Backup to DVD/CD does have the advantage that the hardware is cheap, the media is cheap, and you can have multiple images. Tar is ok for doing basic backup either to CD,DVD or tape directly You do not need make an iso image to backup to DVD/CD or restore that backup.one can treat a DVD/CD unit as a tape unit in this context (at the moment I use this without any problems, this approach does have drawbacks for archive and removal style approaches to data management and for incremental or differential backups require some work on file version tracking). Of the tape tools, bacula and taper have some limitations (mainly in capacity, but in the case of bacula initial setup is not trivial). Amanda is a powerful set of scripts but a bit too much for a SoHo setup in my opinion. There are commercial solutions, but these tend to be expensive. I would also give a little thought to ones data management strategy, before buying kit, consider whether you can manage your data more effectively. e.g. If these are mainly media files and they are transferred to DVD/CD is there any reason to include these in the regular backup routine? (Provided you have 2 or 3 copies). If this is your personal data, a mixture of archiving old unused data to removable media, and backing up current projects and documents is probably as effective as the religious backup of everything in sight approach in terms of coverage, but also does have the advantage you can a working after a failure a lot more quickly than using a brute force approach, as working data is immediately identifiable and available. It also can bring the amount of data to backup to manageable levels. After all, one of the main objectives of backup is to be able to get working as ASAP after a failure, (While having all your data fo the last few years is a good thing, having to trawl through all that data to get to the data you need is probably less useful). - -- ============================================================================== I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my telephone. My wish has come true. I no longer know how to use my telephone. Bjarne Stroustrup ============================================================================== -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with SUSE - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFG1oURasN0sSnLmgIRAiR7AJwJT+Y5n+rOrwUTnoZRbXrGgEjQCwCg8Wgz jS0beDVkEgcvXc5jfzh5eII= =JvJ/ -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org