On Wed, 20 Dec 2000, John Abreau wrote:
> I believe you can the 100-disk spindles of CDR for under $40 now, which
> brings the cost down to about 65 cents per gigabyte.
And I can get DLT-IV tapes for $40, too. As long as I order from Joe's
House of Media ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) and buy Yoyodyne brand tapes. :-) I
chose PC Connection for my quickie information source simply because they sell
name brand stuff and aren't going anywhere. Feel free to develop your own
price lists. :-)
> I've had many bad experiences in the past with tape technology ...
I have heard plenty of horror stories about tape solutions, and in every
single case, it was because people weren't using it right. Usually something
like they've been using the same set of five tapes for two years running, or
they've been clean the drive once a year (or not at all), or they depended on
one tape for everything.
Properly maintained, tape remains the media of choice for "serious" backup
solutions, and for good reason: When you consider all the factors like
cost-per-byte, media capacity, speed, durability, storage lifetime, etc.,
etc., tape comes out ahead in the vast majority of cases.
> ... for my home machines, I'm setting up a backup system using removable
> IDE hard drives.
If it works for you, then that is a good solution.
The biggest problems *I* would have with such a situation are:
- You have to power down the system to change backup media
- Media cost is outrageous
- Media is more delicate than tape
- Questionable reliability of drives (talk about your bad experiences...)
- I object to IDE for religious reasons :-)
The media cost is more significant than you think for most situations
(although, I gather, not yours). For a grandfather/father/son rotation
scheme, you need 20 media. At $200/drive, that is $4000! An equivalent
number of DDS-3 tapes would cost $864.
> ... doesn't entail a capital cost of thousands like DLT or AIT would.
DLT and AIT drives are rather overpriced, unfortunately. :-(
--
Ben Scott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Net Technologies, Inc. <http://www.ntisys.com>
Voice: (800)905-3049 x18 Fax: (978)499-7839
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