I can't really speak authoritively, but here are some points. 1) Tape is dead. Really dead. The only reason for using tape is if you have a tape drive already. Work has an Exabyte VXA2 tape drive that cost around $2000, and the 210 metre tapes are $155 each. So 110 Gb of storage costs around $1.40/Gb.
2) Hard drives are good. A 300 Gb drive will cost you $203 inc GST from ascent. An external IDE/USB caddy is worth ~$60. Put that together and have storage for $0.96/Gb. And you can read it on anyone else's computer after yours is stolen/burned/destroyed. With a tape you have to find a compatible drive. 3) CD and DVD is okay, but if you've got lots of files then 650 Mb or 4700 Mb or 8500 Mb can be constraining. And its hard to automate a backup reliably. 4) Off-site! Your backup must at absolute minimum live in a different building to the machines where it lives for real. Leaving your backup in the car is only marginally better than leaving it in the server. Rsync is your friend for moving the minimum data required. For limited backups talk to me about hosting them on horse. -----Original Message----- From: Wesley Parish [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, 5 March 2006 11:16 p.m. To: [email protected] Subject: Re: update on dying disk Quoting Robert Fisher <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > On Sat, 04 Mar 2006 11:54 pm, Wesley Parish wrote: > > > Now that is techie practice no school will ever give you! > > And the next lesson for Wesley? > > Backup strategy! Yep! And part of that is, what is the best backup (sub)system? CDs? DVDs? Tape? Perhaps that should be a talk subject, done by someone wiser and more experienced than myself? Show of hands? Wesley Parish > > Rob > "Sharpened hands are happy hands. "Brim the tinfall with mirthful bands" - A Deepness in the Sky, Vernor Vinge "I me. Shape middled me. I would come out into hot!" I from the spicy that day was overcasked mockingly - it's a symbol of the other horizon. - emacs : meta x dissociated-press
