Douglas A. Tutty wrote: > Can anyone see a problem with using CF cards in a removeable CF/IDE > adapter for daily/weekly/monthly backup cycle? Note: not for 30-year > archive or anything, just for backup. > > I'm thinking it would fill the niche between DVDs and a tape drive and > not have the throughput requirements for use on an older box. > > Doug.
As was already pointed out, you will have issues with changing media unless you go with USB..or unless you can power down machines to change media. Other than that, there are some basic things that any backup system needs to be able to do: Able to store data Able to recover data Able to hold enough data to be useful Removable from the machine and taken off-site. Able to be rotated between media Sufficient speed to work in your backup window CF wins on "ability to be taken off-site". I've dropped 'em in an envelope to mail 'em to people before with just standard letter postage. (yeah, not exactly secure, of course). My initial response is "CF or other flash media is too small and slow for general purpose backups". BUT not everything is general purpose. For firewalls or DNS servers or many other applications, you can store hundreds of copies of all the most critical data on a 4g flash (and of course, 4g is a "small" flash device anymore...). Heck, for Issues: Make sure you really rotate your media (probably better than usual for flash, since it is relatively "cheap" media). Make sure whatever you do will allow you to change the media (bigger issue for flash than tape, since IDE interface will require a power-down). IF you use the IDE interface, consider using a third party IDE adapter, since the machine BIOS will often get annoying every time you power up the machine with a different CF attached (Compaqs are horrible about that... "Hey, look a new hard disk. Hit F1 to reward me for being so observant! Or don't if you like this pretty message to stay on your screen") General purpose? No. For PARTICULAR purposes? Sure, why not? Nick.
