On 26/6/03 3:40 am, "Bill Martin" wrote: > I've been at this for going on 19 years now. Use Retrospect, and if > you can afford it, an Ecrix VXA-1 or VXA-2 tape drive. They make them > firewire now, they are fast, and the tapes, depending on the tape > drive, are HUGE....meaning they hold a LOT. 33/66 gb per itty-bitty > tape cartridge. I back up a 3 drive server, with 25 users, onto 2 and > a half tapes.
Retrospect, yes. Tape back-up? I'm no longer convinced. I've been backing up to tape for the last year and a half. Using an Onstream Echo FW30 drive. At the time, it seemed the most cost effective method. Two tape sets, one on-site, one off-site. I do not archive any material, therefore my drives are ever expanding. I also have five machines on the go, though one of them is merely a back-up powerbook, which does not need backing up. If you are using only 2.5 tapes, might I suggest that you are backing very little data. Approx 75Gb, I would estimate, from your figures above, if each tape takes a max of 33Gb. My data is over 200Gb worth and growing weekly, with each digital shoot. Some would say, that the digital photography stuff, should be archived, however I personally think this is a ridiculous idea. (I did try it once, when I first started shooting digital). Each shoot would need at least one CD, purely for the originals. Quite often two or more CD's. Then of course a second copy for off-site. To back up 200Gb plus of data would require quite a few CD's and one hell of a lot of time to do. Plus I absolutely hate the fact that I cannot access my images when I want to. That is the beauty of using a computer, the data/image is just a click away, not find the right CD, wait for it to load etc. away. Then there is the storage issue of space, for all those CD's. Just not very practical. Add in the cost, even at a cheap 50p per CD, approx �1/Gb, and things are not that promising. Then there's the fun of never knowing whether the data on that CD over there is still readable. Do you really have time to keep putting it in your machine to check? What a waste if time. It would be like painting that famous bridge, check the first 300 CD's, then start all over again. My system therefore has always worked under the theory of having all my data on hard drives, in my main machine. My image bank is in my main computer. This is then backed up daily, and the offsite version is backed up every few weeks. If the hard drives crash, you have the daily back-up instantly available. If they crash badly, simply buy new hard drives, restore the back-up. Anyway, back to the tape issue. My Onstream went bad on me. Its still under warranty, but Onstream have gone bust (for the moment). So I needed a new system. I now have about 29 onstream tapes on the go, each cost about �30. The drive cost about �300. So we are looking at a back-up system worth �1200. Currently worthless :-( It was also pretty damn slow, to do a complete back-up of all machines. It would take around 5 days. Plus you had to keep swapping tapes over every 3 hours. 14 tapes in all and sometimes you weren't there or had to sleep! So I wanted something faster and more convenient. The first options were either the Ecrix or the AIT system by Sony/LaCie. The tapes are much bigger, so I would only need about 5 tapes per site. However the tapes aren't cheap either. Nor is the machine. I made myself a nice spreadsheet and costed out the whole thing for my situation. It worked out well over �1500 and would be growing all the time. Option 2. Big Disk! LaCie 500Gb big disk at �599. Retrospect can back-up to a file, on any media. Plug it in (firewire) start backing up. It just sits there, running at around 300Mb/second (that's fast, about 10 times as fast as the onstream - can't remember the actual speed of the top of my head). Plus, you never have to change a tape. I've set my server back-up to run daily, and it just works. I never even need to look at it. The back-up file is currently 220Gb, so I've got quite a lot of legroom, for at least 2 years I would estimate. If I need to restore, it will restore quickly and is all there always available. It is extremely cheap/Gb. I can regularly check the drives health, using standard hard drive software. All in all it is the dogs b******ks. All I need now is another one, for off-site. Probably the 400Gb version, as the file will not be growing on that one, as it will be a one off back-up, not incremental as with the daily one. No point swapping them each week, as they don't suffer the same type of wear as the tapes. I would recommend this system of back-up to anyone. Using small disks, if they have less data. If someone mentions hard disks being unreliable. Think about it. That's the whole point of backing up. Of course there is a possibility of them failing, that's why you have one main copy on your computer. One back up copy on site and one copy off site. If you are unlucky enough to have all three fail on you, then you should probably lock yourself in a room full of cotton wool, because you're probably so unlucky that you'll trip over and fall down the stairs any second. Or you could simply buy another hard drive and store it in a bank or something. I suppose a nuclear blast or something could always wipe out the magnetic data, but hell, that will be the least of my worries :-0 Two years ago, this system would not have worked. Hard drives were far too expensive. But if you look around today, the prices have dropped to unbelievable levels. Making them the most cost effective way of storing data. Even when DVD Blue Ray comes along, I can't see them competing with Hard drives. Hard drives are the future (for the time being). Ask anyone with an iPod. Would they ever go back to tapes (or for that matter any other medium) Also find someone with a Tivo (PVR Personal Video Recorder/Hard Drive TV recorder, for those not in the know) Ask them whether they'd use video tape anymore. Storing data on a hard drive and having instant access is the future for sure, not some form of tape or disc (unless that tape/disc was big enough to hold ALL your data, and that's still some time off, I feel) Regards Paul just an opinion, I'm sure many will disagree, but one should open one's mind a little to the options available out there. -- Paul Tansley Fashion & Beauty Photography London +44 (0) 7973 669584 http://www.paultansley.com =============================================================== GO TO http://www.prodig.org for ~ GUIDELINES ~ un/SUBSCRIBING ~ ITEMS for SALE
