-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Carlos E. R. wrote:
The Monday 2008-03-31 at 10:23 +0100, G T Smith wrote:
Yes, but it appears that is cheaper to have the capacity on external HDs on USB boxes, than to backup to DVDs, even if you have two or three disks. And they can be reused and rotated, similar to tapes.
Plus, it is much faster! You don't have to be there changing DVDs. You just program it and leave.
Cost is an often stated factor, however with removable media one has a potentially infinite storage capacity which can be adjusted in relatively small increments at a small progressive cost, whereas with hard drives one the integration of a new drive into a backup system requires a little more effort and a more significant initial outlay. Optical media take up relatively little physical space have a relatively good shelf life. The 4-5 year potential lifespan is probably adequate for archival purposes as one has the option of migrating the contexts before the media hits end of live. External USB based hard drive units come with a lot of additional baggage which one will not get with a caddy based approach. One also has the additional benefit that one has access to the drive diagnostics, (Using a dodgy drive to backup to is probably not going to be helpful), and is probably bit more storage friendly than a based USB device. I am not arguing against the use of hard drive for the purpose, merely suggesting that an USB based external device is possibly not the best option for this route. (eSata has been mentioned and it this stage I am in no position to comment on this as an option) Speed is more down to the mechanism used, what I am working on at moments spends 90% of the time building and documenting an archive and only about 10% of the time actually creating and burning an image of that archive to DVD. What does complicate matters somewhat with a pure file based backup mechanism is that for some applications merely replacing the files may not be adequate, (mysql, subversion are two I can immediately think of for which it is probably preferable to use their own backup and restore processes to backup and recover data than merely copy the physical files). Mail archives can present some intriguing problems (I have before now found every mail duplicated on a client after a server been restored which was more than a bit of a nuisance).
If have looked at KDar/Dar and felt that these did not really work very well as a Tar/Star alternative. The Ghost/image based approach is good
I don't really like tar and similar things: they are easier to break, specially if compressed; and recovery from a large archive is slow and cumbersome.
Pity rsync can not compress.
I have a work round for compression and tar, rather than compress the archive as whole (which I believe is the default behaviour) I have a prototype perl class library that compresses files on an individual basis and tars them.
You can use compressed DVDs, by the way.
-- Cheers, Carlos E. R.
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