On Wednesday 22 December 2004 10:52 am, larry price wrote:

> to this end I've been looking at various backup solutions, and thought
> I'd ask for some informed opinions on the relative merits of different
> solutions.

I went through this a year ago, and spent quite a bit of time looking at 
solutions.  I chose CDBk ( http://sourceforge.net/projects/cdbk/ ).

All of the other CD/DVD backup solutions I looked at were still using a tape 
paradigm, which makes no sense with optical media.  Only one, the one I 
chose, was authored by someone who was willing to think outside of the box.

When you first use CDBk, it starts backing up up your data onto a CD or DVD.  
When it gets full, it tells you to insert another one before the next backup 
run.  At some point, you have a full backup.  After that, only files that 
have changed are backed up.

All of my home directory fits onto about ten CDs.  It took me less than a week 
to get a full backup (I ran it more than once a day at first).  Now every 
night it backs up the stuff that's changed to a rotating set of CD-RWs, and 
it takes months to fill one with new stuff before I have to bring a new one 
into the rotation.

All files are stored on the media in .bz2 files.  If you lose or hose a file, 
there is a utility program that will tell you which disc has the most current 
copy of that file.  Just unbzip it and you have the file back.  No rocket 
science.

I'm still trying to get Newsforge to let me write an article about this most 
excellent tool.

Ken Barber
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