On Tue, Jan 08, 2008 at 09:48:03AM +0000, Khalid Schofield wrote: > On 8 Jan 2008, at 08:08, Nick Guenther wrote: > >On Jan 7, 2008 7:22 AM, knitti <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >>the posting von hannah shows what to do. Ths big picture is this: > >>Backup (and/or archiving) is not fire-and-forget. You have to know > >>how long you want to store this data to choose the right technology > >>and media. And you have to have a process to verify that your data > >>is good after this time. If you want backups for five years, and > >>your life/ business won't come to an end should you lose some data > >>in spite having backed up, use DVDs or HDDs, verify after backup and > >>just store the media. For more than five years and more-or-less > >>critical data, use tape and verify every x time. If you approach ten > >>years and up, you have to know how you get hardware to read the > >>tapes... > >> > > You should REALLY install amanda www.amanda.org and I'd love to get a > thread going about how to set up and manage amanda under OpenBSD. It > looks fantastic but I've installed it on Debian Etch at the moment. > I'll probably convert to OpenBSD soon when we get a decent discussion > going. Seriously if you want to get a decent automated backup system > going look at amanda. I think it's under ports too :) > > >>At least the LTO spec states that drives of the *current* generation > >>_have to_ read and write also tapes one generation older and read > >>tapes which are two generations older. So if you have LTO-2 tapes > >>around, you will be able to read them with LTO-4 drives (which > >>should be checked, but does actually work in this case). > >> > > yup I've just taken delivery of an LTO4 and a semi ok computer (it's > a dell don't be sick). > > >>Some companies and universities with huge archives spend large sums > >>just to copy their archived data to the newest technology every > >>couple of years. > > Still have a few DLT drives. My office server running OpenBSD on a > sun blade 100 has a DLT4000 because Linear head technology is so > safe. Tapes don't often get mangled (I'm looking at you Mr dds drive). I'm seriously looking into getting a tape drive but, of course, I can't afford a new one. I'll see what I can get on the commercial-used market (not eBay) with a bit of a waranty (beyond DOA). Right now, it would be connected to my Athlon64 box which is the only one that could stream data fast enough. The data will likely only come off one 80 GB Seagate SATA drive at a time which limits it to about 40 MB/s max. I know that the FAQ says to just use dump to make backups but what if you want a tape of a specific group of files for archiving? When last did the dump format change? Since it reads the filesystem directly, I'd assume that its filesystem-specific. What if you want portablility across OSs and filesystem types? Is there any more-or-less universal format? Re Amanda: for me, its likely too complex since I only have two boxes and one is a desktop only. Right now it runs its own backup script to create a tarball then the main box rsyncs that over to it. Doug.
