Brian K. White wrote:
Per Jessen wrote:
Or, the backup media can fail (read error) several months later when you need to do a recovery. Even if that error only affects a few bytes, you can loose the entire tar.
It's really just another variation of (b) - the backup media or the physical storage location is not safe/trustworthy.
/Per
Actually that last point is valid. You should never ever actually trust a tape. Buy good tapes, buy good tape drives, keep the tape drive cleaned and don't mistreat the tapes, use bit-level verification** during backus, And despite all that _still_ never actually depend on any single tape. Because the fact is there is no such thing as any mechanical magnetic media that is really dependable, and tape is among the worst, even though there is nothing better.
AFAIR, IBM 3480 and STK 9840 tapes come with a 25-year data retrieval warranty. For longterm storage, I would still advocate keeping two copies, but that would be more to guard against other accidents. /Per -- Per Jessen, Zürich (14.5°C) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org