Re: tapes best for backup?
David Dyer-Bennet [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: s. keeling wrote: I've never run across a CD I couldn't still read, and I've a few old ones. DVD, I would expect to be even better. For me, tape's good enough. Why would you expect DVD to be better? I'd expect it to be worse, for the obvious reasons -- smaller physical bit representations, packed tighter. Yes, about 8x tighter, as I understand it. Also we don't have as much experience with it, so I take what information we *do* have with larger quantities of salt. Also, there's a complication with evaluating accumulated experience: you may know that ten-year-old DVDs are working fine, but you're burning on to new DVDs that were manufactured this year. There's no way to know if some cost-cutting measure has changed their reliability. Myself, I've been using DVDs for backup largely out of laziness/convenience. I still have a DAT drive (SCSI, DDS-2... I think) that can do around 2 gigabytes on a tape, which I will probably switch back to for long term storage. As for on-line backups: I mirror my working files between workstation and laptop. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: tapes best for backup?
On Jan 6, 2008, at 7:10 PM, Rick Thomas wrote: After that, use a cleaning disk to clean the heads of the floppy drive... I find I have to do this a lot, these days. Floppy drives don't get used much, so they get packed full of dust. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: tapes best for backup?
On 01/07/08 14:18, David Brodbeck wrote: On Jan 6, 2008, at 7:10 PM, Rick Thomas wrote: After that, use a cleaning disk to clean the heads of the floppy drive... I find I have to do this a lot, these days. Floppy drives don't get used much, so they get packed full of dust. I haven't had (nor have I needed) a floppy drive in my machine since 2003. -- Ron Johnson, Jr. Jefferson LA USA I'm not a vegetarian because I love animals, I'm a vegetarian because I hate vegetables! unknown -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: tapes best for backup?
On Mon, Jan 07, 2008 at 02:40:07PM -0600, Ron Johnson wrote: On 01/07/08 14:18, David Brodbeck wrote: On Jan 6, 2008, at 7:10 PM, Rick Thomas wrote: After that, use a cleaning disk to clean the heads of the floppy drive... I find I have to do this a lot, these days. Floppy drives don't get used much, so they get packed full of dust. I haven't had (nor have I needed) a floppy drive in my machine since 2003. I have three boxes: 486 with floppy and Zip P-II with floppy, Zip, and USB Athlon64 with Zip and USB, and CD/DVD burner. I use the Zip more than floppies if I'm doing a sneaker-net during a box rebuild but other than that I use scp. Doug. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: tapes best for backup?
Ron Johnson wrote: On 01/05/08 15:16, Hugo Vanwoerkom wrote: Douglas A. Tutty wrote: [snip] snip Interestingly enough, I can still use the IBM floppies that an old version of OS/2 came on in 1988. I've had new floppies fail but not those old IBM ones. Go figure. My wife keeps insisting that my Windows95 on those IBM floppies are still good. Let me give it a try. They are from 1990. Windows95 on 1990 floppies??? Got the floppies when I left IBM in 1990. Put Windows95 on them when I bought that in 1995?. But let me see, I can only find disk 10 + 11. And... [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ ls -l /media/floppy0/* -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1716224 1995-08-24 09:50 /media/floppy0/win95_10.cab -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1716224 1995-08-24 09:50 /media/floppy0/win95_11.cab -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1716224 1995-08-24 09:50 /media/floppy0/win95_12.cab -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1213809 1995-08-24 09:50 /media/floppy0/win95_13.cab [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ ls -l /media/floppy0/* -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 13618 1990-02-02 14:19 /media/floppy0/clock.com -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1869 1990-02-02 14:20 /media/floppy0/clock.ref -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 64933 1995-06-10 05:00 /media/floppy0/dcf50.doc -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 46250 1995-06-10 05:00 /media/floppy0/dcf.exe -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 15193 1995-06-10 05:00 /media/floppy0/dcfhelp.exe -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 74996 1996-03-27 17:40 /media/floppy0/fileman.exe -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2516 1996-03-27 17:40 /media/floppy0/filemega.pro -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 155520 1988-05-19 09:00 /media/floppy0/kedit.exe -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 23790 1988-05-19 09:00 /media/floppy0/kedit.hlp -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 44361 1990-01-12 19:06 /media/floppy0/nbscom.exe -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root551 1995-12-03 19:10 /media/floppy0/nbscom.ini -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 62982 1990-04-29 17:50 /media/floppy0/stp.exe -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 3851 1990-04-29 17:50 /media/floppy0/stp.pro -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 80 1996-01-21 20:42 /media/floppy0/x.bat -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 80 1996-01-21 17:00 /media/floppy0/xed.bat -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 40 1996-01-21 20:43 /media/floppy0/y.bat -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 40 1996-01-21 20:43 /media/floppy0/yed.bat [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ Amazing! Thanks Doug! Hugo -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: tapes best for backup?
Douglas A. Tutty wrote: On Sat, Jan 05, 2008 at 03:12:31PM -0600, Hugo Vanwoerkom wrote: Douglas A. Tutty wrote: On Sat, Jan 05, 2008 at 02:53:45AM -0500, Rick Thomas wrote: As a registered pack-rat, I've got a drawer full of similar old CD- Rs. If I get ambitious and I've got some free time, I'll try a bunch more, just for fun... I wonder what cdck would show. It tests not only ability to read the files, but counts any otherwise silent errors as well. It also automates the reading every file process. Curious little program: none of my CD-R's are rated anygood. Use them all the time. Maybe it has problems with the disk ends. Clearly I'm a user, not a developer. I use it to check all my CD-Rs intended for backup before I consider them done. The program is supposed to be able to verify track layout to predict its readability by other drives, and the strength of the signal to predict its longevity. I've never seen cdck say a disk wasn't anygood, just excellent or, I believe, satisfactory. I tend to get satisfactory if I use a fast burn speed (e.g 16x) and excellent if I use a lower speed (e.g. 4x), even though the buffers are shown to never have been emptied. I wonder if the drive slowing down the burn to prevent a buffer under-run can cause problems that cdck can detect. What I get is: /Sun Jan 06-07:52:00SDA6# cdck Reading sectors 1-302 4 ok ... 248 ok ... ! unable to read sector 302, reason: Input/output error CD overall: Sectors total: 302: Good sectors: 248: Bad sectors (incl. with poor timing): 54 CD timings: Minimal = 2 usec (0.02s) Maximal = 1252828 usec (1.252828s) Average = 5824 usec (0.005824s) Conclusion: Disc contains BAD or even readable sectors, put it into trash can! /Sun Jan 06-07:52:09SDA6# exit But that is my grub boot CD that I use every day and just yesterday recreated it. Hugo -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: tapes best for backup?
On Sun, Jan 06, 2008 at 08:00:04AM -0600, Hugo Vanwoerkom wrote: Conclusion: Disc contains BAD or even readable sectors, put it into trash can! /Sun Jan 06-07:52:09SDA6# exit But that is my grub boot CD that I use every day and just yesterday recreated it. Well, grub doesn't take much space itself. What else is supposed to be on the CD? Perhaps you've never tried to read that sector. Try burning a new CD at slow speed and see what happens when you run cdck. Doug. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: tapes best for backup?
On 01/06/08 09:17, Douglas A. Tutty wrote: On Sun, Jan 06, 2008 at 08:00:04AM -0600, Hugo Vanwoerkom wrote: Conclusion: Disc contains BAD or even readable sectors, put it into trash can! /Sun Jan 06-07:52:09SDA6# exit But that is my grub boot CD that I use every day and just yesterday recreated it. Well, grub doesn't take much space itself. What else is supposed to be on the CD? Perhaps you've never tried to read that sector. Try burning a new CD at slow speed and see what happens when you run cdck. Or burn 650MB onto the disk... -- Ron Johnson, Jr. Jefferson LA USA I'm not a vegetarian because I love animals, I'm a vegetarian because I hate vegetables! unknown -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: tapes best for backup?
Hugo Vanwoerkom wrote: Ron Johnson wrote: On 01/05/08 15:16, Hugo Vanwoerkom wrote: Douglas A. Tutty wrote: [snip] snip Interestingly enough, I can still use the IBM floppies that an old version of OS/2 came on in 1988. I've had new floppies fail but not those old IBM ones. Go figure. My wife keeps insisting that my Windows95 on those IBM floppies are still good. Let me give it a try. They are from 1990. Windows95 on 1990 floppies??? Got the floppies when I left IBM in 1990. Put Windows95 on them when I bought that in 1995?. But let me see, I can only find disk 10 + 11. And... of all those IBM floppies I can only write to 2 Hugo -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: tapes best for backup?
On Jan 5, 2008, at 2:58 PM, Rick Thomas wrote: On Jan 5, 2008, at 10:16 AM, Douglas A. Tutty wrote: On Sat, Jan 05, 2008 at 02:53:45AM -0500, Rick Thomas wrote: As a registered pack-rat, I've got a drawer full of similar old CD- Rs. If I get ambitious and I've got some free time, I'll try a bunch more, just for fun... I wonder what cdck would show. It tests not only ability to read the files, but counts any otherwise silent errors as well. It also automates the reading every file process. OK. There seems to be a cdck package in Debian Etch. If I get ambitious and test (some of) the other CD-Rs in that drawer, I'll use cdck for the tests. Don't hold your breath for results, but if I do it, I'll post anything I find here. Interesting... I tried cdck on two CDs: The first was a CD-RW I just wrote last night. It said it was satisfactory. The longest time was on the order of 0.5 sec, and there were about a dozen of them, mostly near the beginning of the disk. The second was one of my ten-year-old archive disks. It, cdck, said it was unacceptable, based on a couple of dozen unreadable sectors -- all at the end of the disk. The rest of the disk looked a lot like the first one, except that the maximum time was on the order of 0.7 sec, and there were only about a half-dozen of them, scattered near the beginning of the disk. The bad sectors at the end of the disk obviously weren't in any files, so they don't affect the quality of the disk as an archive. I wonder what mechanism there is that only affects sectors at the end of the disk? Maybe the original drive that wrote it ten years ago put a few garbage sectors on each disk it wrote as part of the closing-out process??? Anybody know for sure? Rick -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: tapes best for backup?
On Sun, Jan 06, 2008 at 03:31:45PM -0600, Hugo Vanwoerkom wrote: of all those IBM floppies I can only write to 2 Try a few straight reads to /dev/null just to scrape them clean. Doug. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: tapes best for backup?
On Jan 6, 2008, at 6:53 PM, Douglas A. Tutty wrote: On Sun, Jan 06, 2008 at 03:31:45PM -0600, Hugo Vanwoerkom wrote: of all those IBM floppies I can only write to 2 Try a few straight reads to /dev/null just to scrape them clean. After that, use a cleaning disk to clean the heads of the floppy drive... Rick -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: tapes best for backup?
David Dyer-Bennet [EMAIL PROTECTED]: s. keeling wrote: I've never run across a CD I couldn't still read, and I've a few old ones. DVD, I would expect to be even better. For me, tape's Why would you expect DVD to be better? I'd expect it to be worse, for the obvious reasons -- smaller physical bit representations, packed Because it's newer technology which ought to have incorporated lessons learned from the CD history. Perhaps that's wishful thinking. -- Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. (*)http://blinkynet.net/comp/uip5.html Linux Counter #80292 - -http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1855.htmlPlease, don't Cc: me. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: tapes best for backup?
On Sat, Jan 05, 2008 at 12:46:11AM -0600, David Dyer-Bennet wrote: Why do you think DLTs are more reliable than optical media or hard drives? My experience with tapes in general (not DLTs) certainly does not predispose me towards that view, but I suppose DLTs could be different. I've never had a CD or DVD go bad once it passed verification, and some of my cds are from the early 1990s (Kodak Photo CDs). I *have* had tapes in every format I've ever used, from 7-track up to DDS, go bad or be unreadable for other reasons. I've also had a lot of the *drives* go bad, which means I'd probably want two or three before storing anything important on the tape format. I started this thread on debian-user after a thread on OpenBSD berated someone for relying on CD/DVDs for backups and archives because they fade over time. Their attitude is that tape is still the only viable medium for long-term storage. They also said that hard drives kept off-line get bit rot while if left on-line they are at risk of the same power surge and most other threats to which is the main data. I observed that, based on what I see on e.g ibm's website that the trend in enterprise stuff is toward virtual tape libraries that are really a bunch of hard disks that appear to the network and its apps as if it were a tape library. The answer was that those are purchased by crazy managers. So I've been specifically asking about archives. Sure, if you keep backing-up the same data, you continually get feedback if the media is getting flaky. The answer on DU seems to be that while some sites use tape, others just keep everything on line and for off-site backup, the data goes somewhere else where it is also kept on-line. I.e. why bother archiving? DLT and LTO are supposed to be guaranteed for 30 years. DDS for about 10 years. We haven't had DVDs that long. We haven't had USB sticks that long. Hard drives that right now are 10 years old are considered unreliable. Then again, tape drives don't last that long and the practice seems to be that if you really need to archive data for 30 years, to store a new-but-tested drive or two with the backup tapes. The only personal experience I have had with computer tapes is my Irwin/IBM QIC-80 100 MB that I bought with my first computer (IBM PS/2 386). I have had those tapes fail but only noticed when writing. The only time I needed that backup was when the 386's motherboard warped like a cookie sheet in the oven (room temp 35 C, we had no A/C). I bought my IBM 486, put the tape drive in it (after convincing IBM to give me an adapter to allow me to connect the drive) and did a restore. When I moved from OS/2 to Linux, the QIC isn't supported so I switched to ZIP disks and they have always worked. Interestingly enough, I can still use the IBM floppies that an old version of OS/2 came on in 1988. I've had new floppies fail but not those old IBM ones. Go figure. So I guess, for me, only from personal experience, I'd have to say that the most reliable, longest lived, backup media has to be IBM floppies. Of course, the 7 GB backup would take 5120 floppies which would more than pay for a new LTO drive. Progress. Doug. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: tapes best for backup?
Douglas A. Tutty wrote: So I guess, for me, only from personal experience, I'd have to say that the most reliable, longest lived, backup media has to be IBM floppies. Of course, the 7 GB backup would take 5120 floppies which would more than pay for a new LTO drive. Progress. Yep! And I take the implicit point about personal experience too, of course. While the DLTs are rated for 30 years, some of the gold archival DVDs are rated for 200 (and also some of the archival CDs I was using before that). I wish my experience with floppies were that good; the Microsoft floppies with my original copy of the Microsoft Font Pack for Windows 3.whatever was unreadable when I tried it a couple of years back. -- David Dyer-Bennet, [EMAIL PROTECTED]; http://dd-b.net/ Snapshots: http://dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/data/ Photos: http://dd-b.net/photography/gallery/ Dragaera: http://dragaera.info -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: tapes best for backup?
On Sat, Jan 05, 2008 at 02:53:45AM -0500, Rick Thomas wrote: As a registered pack-rat, I've got a drawer full of similar old CD- Rs. If I get ambitious and I've got some free time, I'll try a bunch more, just for fun... I wonder what cdck would show. It tests not only ability to read the files, but counts any otherwise silent errors as well. It also automates the reading every file process. Doug. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: tapes best for backup?
On Sat, Jan 05, 2008 at 12:43:00AM -0600, David Dyer-Bennet wrote: Why would you expect DVD to be better? I'd expect it to be worse, for the obvious reasons -- smaller physical bit representations, packed tighter. Also we don't have as much experience with it, so I take what information we *do* have with larger quantities of salt. Don't DVDs have the physical media sandwitched between two layers of plastic? Doug. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: tapes best for backup?
s. keeling wrote: David Dyer-Bennet [EMAIL PROTECTED]: s. keeling wrote: I've never run across a CD I couldn't still read, and I've a few old ones. DVD, I would expect to be even better. For me, tape's Why would you expect DVD to be better? I'd expect it to be worse, for the obvious reasons -- smaller physical bit representations, packed Because it's newer technology which ought to have incorporated lessons learned from the CD history. Perhaps that's wishful thinking. Ah; well, perhaps it is, but it's not *crazy* I don't think, either. I feel like it's not really new tech, since it's so very similar to CD-R. To me it feels like old tech pushed very hard to achieve the much higher densities. The disk layering and the dyes are to the best of my knowledge *very* similar. -- David Dyer-Bennet, [EMAIL PROTECTED]; http://dd-b.net/ Snapshots: http://dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/data/ Photos: http://dd-b.net/photography/gallery/ Dragaera: http://dragaera.info -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: tapes best for backup?
On Jan 5, 2008, at 10:16 AM, Douglas A. Tutty wrote: On Sat, Jan 05, 2008 at 02:53:45AM -0500, Rick Thomas wrote: As a registered pack-rat, I've got a drawer full of similar old CD- Rs. If I get ambitious and I've got some free time, I'll try a bunch more, just for fun... I wonder what cdck would show. It tests not only ability to read the files, but counts any otherwise silent errors as well. It also automates the reading every file process. OK. There seems to be a cdck package in Debian Etch. If I get ambitious and test (some of) the other CD-Rs in that drawer, I'll use cdck for the tests. Don't hold your breath for results, but if I do it, I'll post anything I find here. Rick -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: tapes best for backup?
Douglas A. Tutty wrote: On Sat, Jan 05, 2008 at 12:46:11AM -0600, David Dyer-Bennet wrote: Why do you think DLTs are more reliable than optical media or hard drives? My experience with tapes in general (not DLTs) certainly does not predispose me towards that view, but I suppose DLTs could be different. I've never had a CD or DVD go bad once it passed verification, and some of my cds are from the early 1990s (Kodak Photo CDs). I *have* had tapes in every format I've ever used, from 7-track up to DDS, go bad or be unreadable for other reasons. I've also had a lot of the *drives* go bad, which means I'd probably want two or three before storing anything important on the tape format. snip Interestingly enough, I can still use the IBM floppies that an old version of OS/2 came on in 1988. I've had new floppies fail but not those old IBM ones. Go figure. My wife keeps insisting that my Windows95 on those IBM floppies are still good. Let me give it a try. They are from 1990. Hugo -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: tapes best for backup?
On 01/05/08 15:00, David Brodbeck wrote: On Jan 5, 2008, at 8:06 AM, Douglas A. Tutty wrote: I started this thread on debian-user after a thread on OpenBSD berated someone for relying on CD/DVDs for backups and archives because they fade over time. If that's the concern, why not copy the archived material to new media every five years or so? The discs aren't that expensive, and experience seems to suggest that the data is pretty safe for that time period. Keeping the current and previous copy would add another layer of safety -- two copies are unlikely to both get damaged in exactly the same spot. But since that's tedious and prone to forgetfulness (who remembers to copy -- possibly dozens of -- DVD's and CR-Rs to new media every FIVE years?), continuous/rotating backup to modern ultrahigh-density hard drives seems best for home and SOHO use. Leave the tapes at Iron Mountain to the companies that can afford it. Actually, prices of SATA-based SANs have come down far enough that we keep 7 years of transactional data on-line as well as on tape, because we get subpoena requests (lawyers wanting to know when some- one drove thru an E-ZPass lane) often enough that it got really tedious searching thru high-capacity tapes for a few dozen records. I actually think this is a good idea for any archival media, including tape. Tape can fail due to age when the binder breaks down -- I haven't seen this specifically with data tape, but I've seen 20 year old videotapes that were shedding iron oxide at a pretty distressing rate. The favored tape formats also change every few years and working drives for obsolete formats can be very hard to find. I ran across a stack of QIC-40 cartridges a while back and realized if I'd wanted what was on them, I'd have had a hard time. The drives were kind of flimsy and required a 5.25 floppy controller. Also the sync track was on the edge of the tape, exactly where it was most prone to damage. -- Ron Johnson, Jr. Jefferson LA USA I'm not a vegetarian because I love animals, I'm a vegetarian because I hate vegetables! unknown -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: tapes best for backup?
Douglas A. Tutty wrote: On Sat, Jan 05, 2008 at 02:53:45AM -0500, Rick Thomas wrote: As a registered pack-rat, I've got a drawer full of similar old CD- Rs. If I get ambitious and I've got some free time, I'll try a bunch more, just for fun... I wonder what cdck would show. It tests not only ability to read the files, but counts any otherwise silent errors as well. It also automates the reading every file process. Curious little program: none of my CD-R's are rated anygood. Use them all the time. Maybe it has problems with the disk ends. Clearly I'm a user, not a developer. Hugo -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: tapes best for backup?
On Jan 5, 2008, at 8:06 AM, Douglas A. Tutty wrote: I started this thread on debian-user after a thread on OpenBSD berated someone for relying on CD/DVDs for backups and archives because they fade over time. If that's the concern, why not copy the archived material to new media every five years or so? The discs aren't that expensive, and experience seems to suggest that the data is pretty safe for that time period. Keeping the current and previous copy would add another layer of safety -- two copies are unlikely to both get damaged in exactly the same spot. I actually think this is a good idea for any archival media, including tape. Tape can fail due to age when the binder breaks down -- I haven't seen this specifically with data tape, but I've seen 20 year old videotapes that were shedding iron oxide at a pretty distressing rate. The favored tape formats also change every few years and working drives for obsolete formats can be very hard to find. I ran across a stack of QIC-40 cartridges a while back and realized if I'd wanted what was on them, I'd have had a hard time. The drives were kind of flimsy and required a 5.25 floppy controller. Also the sync track was on the edge of the tape, exactly where it was most prone to damage. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: tapes best for backup?
On Jan 5, 2008, at 1:16 PM, Hugo Vanwoerkom wrote: Douglas A. Tutty wrote: On Sat, Jan 05, 2008 at 12:46:11AM -0600, David Dyer-Bennet wrote: Interestingly enough, I can still use the IBM floppies that an old version of OS/2 came on in 1988. I've had new floppies fail but not those old IBM ones. Go figure. My wife keeps insisting that my Windows95 on those IBM floppies are still good. Let me give it a try. They are from 1990. My personal experience suggests the old 720K floppies were a lot more reliable than the 1.44 megabyte ones. Also, I think both the media and the drives got less reliable as they got cheaper. 5.25 1.2 megabyte floppies were the worst, I think. There were serious interchange problems between 1.2 megabyte and 360K drives. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: tapes best for backup?
On 01/05/08 15:16, Hugo Vanwoerkom wrote: Douglas A. Tutty wrote: [snip] snip Interestingly enough, I can still use the IBM floppies that an old version of OS/2 came on in 1988. I've had new floppies fail but not those old IBM ones. Go figure. My wife keeps insisting that my Windows95 on those IBM floppies are still good. Let me give it a try. They are from 1990. Windows95 on 1990 floppies??? -- Ron Johnson, Jr. Jefferson LA USA I'm not a vegetarian because I love animals, I'm a vegetarian because I hate vegetables! unknown -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: tapes best for backup?
On 01/05/08 15:45, David Brodbeck wrote: [snip] My personal experience suggests the old 720K floppies were a lot more reliable than the 1.44 megabyte ones. I don't remember seeing many 720K drives or disks. Had a couple in a cheap NEC laptop from 1987, though. Also, I think both the media and the drives got less reliable as they got cheaper. Ain't that the truth... 5.25 1.2 megabyte floppies were the worst, I think. There were serious interchange problems between 1.2 megabyte and 360K drives. That was true in the early (1984-1986) days, but after that the interop problems were resolved. -- Ron Johnson, Jr. Jefferson LA USA I'm not a vegetarian because I love animals, I'm a vegetarian because I hate vegetables! unknown -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: tapes best for backup?
On Jan 5, 2008 1:16 PM, Hugo Vanwoerkom [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: My wife keeps insisting that my Windows95 on those IBM floppies are still good. Let me give it a try. They are from 1990. Uuuh, is that so? Windows95 was released on August 24, 1995. I remember the hype so much from that summer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows95 -- Paul Johnson [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: tapes best for backup?
On Jan 5, 2008, at 1:20 PM, Ron Johnson wrote: On 01/05/08 15:00, David Brodbeck wrote: On Jan 5, 2008, at 8:06 AM, Douglas A. Tutty wrote: I started this thread on debian-user after a thread on OpenBSD berated someone for relying on CD/DVDs for backups and archives because they fade over time. If that's the concern, why not copy the archived material to new media every five years or so? The discs aren't that expensive, and experience seems to suggest that the data is pretty safe for that time period. Keeping the current and previous copy would add another layer of safety -- two copies are unlikely to both get damaged in exactly the same spot. But since that's tedious and prone to forgetfulness (who remembers to copy -- possibly dozens of -- DVD's and CR-Rs to new media every FIVE years?), continuous/rotating backup to modern ultrahigh-density hard drives seems best for home and SOHO use. That's pretty much what I do. I archive some stuff to optical media, but it's mostly old software and TV program recordings -- stuff that's nice to have, but that I wouldn't be too hacked off if I lost. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: tapes best for backup?
On Sat, Jan 05, 2008 at 03:12:31PM -0600, Hugo Vanwoerkom wrote: Douglas A. Tutty wrote: On Sat, Jan 05, 2008 at 02:53:45AM -0500, Rick Thomas wrote: As a registered pack-rat, I've got a drawer full of similar old CD- Rs. If I get ambitious and I've got some free time, I'll try a bunch more, just for fun... I wonder what cdck would show. It tests not only ability to read the files, but counts any otherwise silent errors as well. It also automates the reading every file process. Curious little program: none of my CD-R's are rated anygood. Use them all the time. Maybe it has problems with the disk ends. Clearly I'm a user, not a developer. I use it to check all my CD-Rs intended for backup before I consider them done. The program is supposed to be able to verify track layout to predict its readability by other drives, and the strength of the signal to predict its longevity. I've never seen cdck say a disk wasn't anygood, just excellent or, I believe, satisfactory. I tend to get satisfactory if I use a fast burn speed (e.g 16x) and excellent if I use a lower speed (e.g. 4x), even though the buffers are shown to never have been emptied. I wonder if the drive slowing down the burn to prevent a buffer under-run can cause problems that cdck can detect. Doug. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: tapes best for backup?
On Sat, Jan 05, 2008 at 03:30:55PM -0600, Ron Johnson wrote: On 01/05/08 15:16, Hugo Vanwoerkom wrote: My wife keeps insisting that my Windows95 on those IBM floppies are still good. Let me give it a try. They are from 1990. Windows95 on 1990 floppies??? Ain't quantum computing great? His wife can probably also get that pesky Gigabit Ethernet connection to ENIAC working too. :) Doug. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: tapes best for backup?
Tapes are still the lowest cost, reliable method for backups and archiving. I've heard about issues with DLT's but never experienced any problems with them. The Travan drives are no longer produced, and they had a poorly designed spindle/band mechanism that failed within a year in most cases... The 1/4inch drives worked really well until the amount to backup hit around 10GB. They were just too slow. DDS drives work well, but are not as fast as DLT and LTO drives. When you have less than about 15-20GB, the DDS drives can do a backup and verify in a reasonable time. (and you can get the 20/40 DDS and related Adaptec controllers on the cheap on EBay...) Larger amounts push you into the DLT/LTO market so you can keep the backup process under 6 hours. The last LTO we installed was 800GB native and we estimate it could backup and verify the native amount in less than 6 hours. ** Make Sure You Have mt setblk 0 for DLT/LTO and most DDS drives or they will run slowly ** ** If the blocksize is set to 512 (the default at boot), they seek, seek, seek,... instead of stream... ** To avoid the costs like you encounter with Iron Mountain, we set up a relationship with another company in another state and provide offsite backup services for each other's clients. (rsync or Sentinel). That solves the client's question, What if we have a local catastrophe like an earthquake? with more reasonable pricing. Enjoy! Larry -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: tapes best for backup?
On Thu, Jan 03, 2008 at 09:56:19PM -0600, Ron Johnson wrote: On 01/03/08 20:30, Douglas A. Tutty wrote: One of the threads over at [EMAIL PROTECTED] has gone OT (for them) into discussing backup media. The concensus there seems to be that tape (e.g. DLT) is still the best for long-term storage (e.g. archives) Do they even make new DLT 8000 drives anymore? We are happy with SuperDLT2 drives, but are transitioning to LTO3. because CD/DVDs fade rather quickly while hard drives get bit rot over the years and since they're not being run frequently you don't see error messages appearing. I'm wondering what people here on DU use. Lets say the archive size is 7 GB. It could fit on one DVD; one(?) or two USB sticks, SD cards, etc; 7GB? That was a lot in 1992, when DLT-III was king, but now DLT IV is ancient, and 7GB is -- bluntly -- chickenfeed. Right. What about things of great sentimental value? E.g. family photos? What about financial records? Sure 7 GB is chickenfeed. It fits on one DVD. However, to put that on the shelf, what to use to make it last? an old spare hard drive or a new dedicated hard drive in (presumably) an external (USB, firewire, eSATA?) case. Do people still use tape? I note that the drive prices for used drives on eBay are quite low but then most (?) would need to add the appropriate scsi card since I doubt they would be SATA compatible. What kind? DLT8000 drives have been around now for 15 years Other than rsyncing to another box, what do people use for put-it-on-the-shelf archiving? How important is the data? Personal or commercial? If a reputable archival company like Iron Mountain offers on-line storage, then I'd encrypt it and drop it on their servers. So how do they store it? If they're just going to drop it onto a hard drive and forget about it, how is that different than me putting it on 2 hard drives: one on a backup server that runs so that hard drive errors show up; one in an external case that gets a fresh backup put on it every month or so and goes to the bank's safety deposit box? Or, if they're just going to archive it in a tape library, how is that different than me putting it on a tape and putting that in the bank? Doug. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: tapes best for backup?
On Jan 4, 2008, at 7:38 AM, Larry Irwin wrote: I've heard about issues with DLT's but never experienced any problems with them. I thought DLT was OK when I was using it. It was certainly better than the DDS/DAT drives it replaced -- those had to be cleaned every other day, whereas the DLT drives only signaled for cleaning a couple times a year. I had occasional load/unload reliability problems but I think they were due to bad drive design on the unit I had, not any inherent problem with the tape. (It was an Overland tape library, but the real culprit seemed to be the Benchmark DLT1 drive inside.) The main thing about DLT tapes is don't drop them. Treat them with the kind of care you would hard disks. If you drop them the spindle will get knocked out of position and they will likely jam the next time they're loaded. I would not buy a used tape drive. They're finicky mechanical devices and you really want a warranty. Every time I've bought a used tape drive thinking I was getting a good deal it's died within a month. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: tapes best for backup?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 01/04/08 10:23, Douglas A. Tutty wrote: On Thu, Jan 03, 2008 at 09:56:19PM -0600, Ron Johnson wrote: On 01/03/08 20:30, Douglas A. Tutty wrote: One of the threads over at [EMAIL PROTECTED] has gone OT (for them) into discussing backup media. The concensus there seems to be that tape (e.g. DLT) is still the best for long-term storage (e.g. archives) Do they even make new DLT 8000 drives anymore? We are happy with SuperDLT2 drives, but are transitioning to LTO3. because CD/DVDs fade rather quickly while hard drives get bit rot over the years and since they're not being run frequently you don't see error messages appearing. I'm wondering what people here on DU use. Lets say the archive size is 7 GB. It could fit on one DVD; one(?) or two USB sticks, SD cards, etc; 7GB? That was a lot in 1992, when DLT-III was king, but now DLT IV is ancient, and 7GB is -- bluntly -- chickenfeed. Right. What about things of great sentimental value? E.g. family photos? What about financial records? Sure 7 GB is chickenfeed. It fits on one DVD. However, to put that on the shelf, what to use to make it last? Chickenfeed is still important... to chickens. So I wasn't trying to denigrate your 7GB of important data, but to express that, in today's world, tape would be a radically cost- inefficient means of storing only 7GB. [snip] If a reputable archival company like Iron Mountain offers on-line storage, then I'd encrypt it and drop it on their servers. So how do they store it? If they're just going to drop it onto a hard drive and forget about it, how is that different than me putting it on 2 hard drives: one on a backup server that runs so that hard drive errors show up; one in an external case that gets a fresh backup put on it every month or so and goes to the bank's safety deposit box? Or, if they're just going to archive it in a tape library, how is that different than me putting it on a tape and putting that in the bank? Nothing... except expertise. It's their *job* to monitor the SAN, replacing failed disks, taking backups, etc. - -- Ron Johnson, Jr. Jefferson LA USA I'm not a vegetarian because I love animals, I'm a vegetarian because I hate vegetables! unknown -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFHfnUVS9HxQb37XmcRAgxvAKCq1DUMhrtydW2qd7eh4zMwP4ntFQCg2rxY p4MFO2nGprsiWZlbRMDn7HE= =+8qV -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: tapes best for backup?
On Fri January 4 2008, Ron Johnson wrote: So I wasn't trying to denigrate your 7GB of important data, but to express that, in today's world, tape would be a radically cost- inefficient means of storing only 7GB. so, what would be a good method.. say for instance MY system. my /home is 164 Gb, with 50 Gb free, so I've used 110 Gb. Right now I do the rsync to a 500Gb Mybook USB drive. But I don't keep the drive connected, so I don't do it often enough.. -- Paul Cartwright Registered Linux user # 367800 Registered Ubuntu User #12459 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: tapes best for backup?
On 01/04/08 12:24, Paul Cartwright wrote: On Fri January 4 2008, Ron Johnson wrote: So I wasn't trying to denigrate your 7GB of important data, but to express that, in today's world, tape would be a radically cost- inefficient means of storing only 7GB. so, what would be a good method.. say for instance MY system. my /home is 164 Gb, with 50 Gb free, so I've used 110 Gb. Right now I do the rsync to a 500Gb Mybook USB drive. But I don't keep the drive connected, so I don't do it often enough.. Discipline. It took a near disaster at our company for Upper Management to go from daily database backups are vital being an easily-bypassed slogan to actual etched-in-stone policy. So, how much of that 114GB is Really Important, important enough to spend regular time, effort money to ensure it's survival? -- Ron Johnson, Jr. Jefferson LA USA I'm not a vegetarian because I love animals, I'm a vegetarian because I hate vegetables! unknown -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: tapes best for backup?
Paul Cartwright wrote: On Fri January 4 2008, Ron Johnson wrote: So I wasn't trying to denigrate your 7GB of important data, but to express that, in today's world, tape would be a radically cost- inefficient means of storing only 7GB. so, what would be a good method.. say for instance MY system. my /home is 164 Gb, with 50 Gb free, so I've used 110 Gb. Right now I do the rsync to a 500Gb Mybook USB drive. But I don't keep the drive connected, so I don't do it often enough.. What I think of as minimum acceptable backup is two offline volumes to accept backups, used alternately. Anything less leaves you with all copies of your data online and vulnerable at once -- to a power surge, lightning strike, malware, or idiot sysadmin (rm -rf /). I've got a nightly cron job that does the rsync; it looks for either of the two volumes (mine are named wrack and ruin) and uses whichever is present, or if both are present has a day-based preference so it would alternate if I just left them connected. I have to swap the cords each day, to put the right one online before I go to bed. Yes, that's not 100% reliable, but getting the reminder message in the morning has helped me remember to do it. I'm going to make a little sign that hangs on the spine of the MyBook (from the perforated top plate) to indicate which one I used last, rather than depending on my memory (though the scheme isn't totally ruined if I mess up the alternation now and then). Depending on what you use the system for, lower levels of backup can be fine. If you know for sure the only significant work done, and remember to do it, a manual backup whenever you did any significant work would be enough. My server is storing files for the rest of the household too, so I can't count on knowing, and just go ahead and do backups every day. I'm using rsync to get the files from the server to the backup volume, sounds like you made the same choice. Rsync is pretty cool for this. You *could* use an X10 computer-controlled power controller and a couple of appliance modules to put the power to the two external drives under computer control. Or you could use an independent external timer (have to have a 48-hour or better timer though to alternate days). -- David Dyer-Bennet, [EMAIL PROTECTED]; http://dd-b.net/ Snapshots: http://dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/data/ Photos: http://dd-b.net/photography/gallery/ Dragaera: http://dragaera.info -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: tapes best for backup?
On Jan 4, 2008, at 2:18 PM, David Dyer-Bennet wrote: You *could* use an X10 computer-controlled power controller and a couple of appliance modules to put the power to the two external drives under computer control. Or you could use an independent external timer (have to have a 48-hour or better timer though to alternate days). My experience with X10 gear suggests it's likely to be less reliable than remembering to do it manually every morning. ;) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: tapes best for backup?
Ron Johnson [EMAIL PROTECTED]: On 01/04/08 10:23, Douglas A. Tutty wrote: Right. What about things of great sentimental value? E.g. family photos? What about financial records? Sure 7 GB is chickenfeed. It So I wasn't trying to denigrate your 7GB of important data, but to express that, in today's world, tape would be a radically cost- inefficient means of storing only 7GB. ... If starting from scratch, aka., Where to go now from here?, as in buying new hardware. On the other hand, if you're sitting with a new/hand-me-down Sun U30 which came with a Sun DDS3 tape drive, 12 blank tapes, and head cleaner tape, I think any comparable choice of backup medium would be horrifically expensive in comparison to using what you've got. Sure, only 12 Gb/tape, and it's no screamer but if that's all you want, it works. Floppies often became unreadable (when I still used them). I've never run across a CD I couldn't still read, and I've a few old ones. DVD, I would expect to be even better. For me, tape's good enough. -- Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. (*)http://blinkynet.net/comp/uip5.html Linux Counter #80292 - -http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1855.htmlPlease, don't Cc: me. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: tapes best for backup?
On Fri, Jan 04, 2008 at 09:12:19AM -0800, David Brodbeck wrote: On Jan 4, 2008, at 7:38 AM, Larry Irwin wrote: I would not buy a used tape drive. They're finicky mechanical devices and you really want a warranty. Every time I've bought a used tape drive thinking I was getting a good deal it's died within a month. Which puts DLTs out of reach for the home user. Which means that either I archive to less reliable media (CD/DVD, hard disk) or keep everything online and only do backups with no archives. Glossary: backup: copy everything from the main computer and leave all data on the main computer. archive: copy data important for long-term use (e.g. financial records, family pictures or videos) and possibly remove them from the main computer. Doug. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: tapes best for backup?
On Fri, Jan 04, 2008 at 04:18:11PM -0600, David Dyer-Bennet wrote: Paul Cartwright wrote: On Fri January 4 2008, Ron Johnson wrote: so, what would be a good method.. say for instance MY system. my /home is 164 Gb, with 50 Gb free, so I've used 110 Gb. Right now I do the rsync to a 500Gb Mybook USB drive. But I don't keep the drive connected, so I don't do it often enough.. What I think of as minimum acceptable backup is two offline volumes to accept backups, used alternately. Anything less leaves you with all copies of your data online and vulnerable at once -- to a power surge, lightning strike, malware, or idiot sysadmin (rm -rf /). Right, but this is on-line (or near-line) backup. The data on the media doesn't have to last long, only between backup cycles. What about archives? Or, do you just keep everything on-line (buy more disks for the computer and bigger USB drives for backups) and do backups and never archive anything? Doug. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: tapes best for backup?
On Fri, Jan 04, 2008 at 12:04:05PM -0600, Ron Johnson wrote: On 01/04/08 10:23, Douglas A. Tutty wrote: On Thu, Jan 03, 2008 at 09:56:19PM -0600, Ron Johnson wrote: On 01/03/08 20:30, Douglas A. Tutty wrote: Right. What about things of great sentimental value? E.g. family photos? What about financial records? Sure 7 GB is chickenfeed. It fits on one DVD. However, to put that on the shelf, what to use to make it last? Chickenfeed is still important... to chickens. So I wasn't trying to denigrate your 7GB of important data, but to express that, in today's world, tape would be a radically cost- inefficient means of storing only 7GB. [snip] If a reputable archival company like Iron Mountain offers on-line storage, then I'd encrypt it and drop it on their servers. So how do they store it? If they're just going to drop it onto a hard drive and forget about it, how is that different than me putting it on 2 hard drives: one on a backup server that runs so that hard drive errors show up; one in an external case that gets a fresh backup put on it every month or so and goes to the bank's safety deposit box? Or, if they're just going to archive it in a tape library, how is that different than me putting it on a tape and putting that in the bank? Nothing... except expertise. It's their *job* to monitor the SAN, replacing failed disks, taking backups, etc. So, ultimatly, for reliability, it ends up on tape. On-line storage places amortize the cost of a tape drive over the number of people's data it takes to fill a tape(s) (well, you get what I mean I hope). So if one could get an older-model tape drive (say, some version of DLT), tape remains the best for on-the-shelf off-line archival purposes? Doug. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: tapes best for backup?
On Friday 04 January 2008, Douglas A. Tutty wrote: On Fri, Jan 04, 2008 at 09:12:19AM -0800, David Brodbeck wrote: On Jan 4, 2008, at 7:38 AM, Larry Irwin wrote: I would not buy a used tape drive. They're finicky mechanical devices and you really want a warranty. Every time I've bought a used tape drive thinking I was getting a good deal it's died within a month. Which puts DLTs out of reach for the home user. Which means that either I archive to less reliable media (CD/DVD, hard disk) or keep everything online and only do backups with no archives. Glossary: backup: copy everything from the main computer and leave all data on the main computer. archive: copy data important for long-term use (e.g. financial records, family pictures or videos) and possibly remove them from the main computer. Doug. Doug, Have you considered an online storage site such as rsync.net? Given that you are connecting to the internet via dial-up, this option may not be viable. John -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: tapes best for backup?
On 01/04/08 20:26, Douglas A. Tutty wrote: On Fri, Jan 04, 2008 at 04:18:11PM -0600, David Dyer-Bennet wrote: Paul Cartwright wrote: On Fri January 4 2008, Ron Johnson wrote: so, what would be a good method.. say for instance MY system. my /home is 164 Gb, with 50 Gb free, so I've used 110 Gb. Right now I do the rsync to a 500Gb Mybook USB drive. But I don't keep the drive connected, so I don't do it often enough.. What I think of as minimum acceptable backup is two offline volumes to accept backups, used alternately. Anything less leaves you with all copies of your data online and vulnerable at once -- to a power surge, lightning strike, malware, or idiot sysadmin (rm -rf /). Right, but this is on-line (or near-line) backup. The data on the media doesn't have to last long, only between backup cycles. What about archives? Or, do you just keep everything on-line (buy more disks for the computer and bigger USB drives for backups) and do backups and never archive anything? With $100 500GB hard drives and $20 eSATA enclosures, why archive? Have a 2 drive rotation and bring the A drive to your Mom's house when you visit for Sunday dinner, returning with the B drives, and vice versa the next week. When one of them starts to get flaky, toss it and put a new drive in the enclosure. -- Ron Johnson, Jr. Jefferson LA USA I'm not a vegetarian because I love animals, I'm a vegetarian because I hate vegetables! unknown -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: tapes best for backup?
On 01/04/08 20:21, Douglas A. Tutty wrote: On Fri, Jan 04, 2008 at 12:04:05PM -0600, Ron Johnson wrote: On 01/04/08 10:23, Douglas A. Tutty wrote: On Thu, Jan 03, 2008 at 09:56:19PM -0600, Ron Johnson wrote: On 01/03/08 20:30, Douglas A. Tutty wrote: Right. What about things of great sentimental value? E.g. family photos? What about financial records? Sure 7 GB is chickenfeed. It fits on one DVD. However, to put that on the shelf, what to use to make it last? Chickenfeed is still important... to chickens. So I wasn't trying to denigrate your 7GB of important data, but to express that, in today's world, tape would be a radically cost- inefficient means of storing only 7GB. [snip] If a reputable archival company like Iron Mountain offers on-line storage, then I'd encrypt it and drop it on their servers. So how do they store it? If they're just going to drop it onto a hard drive and forget about it, how is that different than me putting it on 2 hard drives: one on a backup server that runs so that hard drive errors show up; one in an external case that gets a fresh backup put on it every month or so and goes to the bank's safety deposit box? Or, if they're just going to archive it in a tape library, how is that different than me putting it on a tape and putting that in the bank? Nothing... except expertise. It's their *job* to monitor the SAN, replacing failed disks, taking backups, etc. So, ultimatly, for reliability, it ends up on tape. On-line storage places amortize the cost of a tape drive over the number of people's data it takes to fill a tape(s) (well, you get what I mean I hope). Yes. Except expect it's on disk *and* tape. So if one could get an older-model tape drive (say, some version of DLT), tape remains the best for on-the-shelf off-line archival purposes? Yeah. But only for amounts -- and importance (think SOX or Big Brother) -- of data that justifies the cost of good drives and relatively expensive tapes. -- Ron Johnson, Jr. Jefferson LA USA I'm not a vegetarian because I love animals, I'm a vegetarian because I hate vegetables! unknown -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: tapes best for backup?
On 01/04/08 20:30, Douglas A. Tutty wrote: On Fri, Jan 04, 2008 at 09:12:19AM -0800, David Brodbeck wrote: On Jan 4, 2008, at 7:38 AM, Larry Irwin wrote: I would not buy a used tape drive. They're finicky mechanical devices and you really want a warranty. Every time I've bought a used tape drive thinking I was getting a good deal it's died within a month. Which puts DLTs out of reach for the home user. Which means that either I archive to less reliable media (CD/DVD, hard disk) or keep everything online and only do backups with no archives. Glossary: backup: copy everything from the main computer and leave all data on the main computer. archive: copy data important for long-term use (e.g. financial records, family pictures or videos) and possibly remove them from the main computer. Sure. Newegg has 400GB drives for 5.7GB/$ and enclosures are small enough to fit in your laptop bag. -- Ron Johnson, Jr. Jefferson LA USA I'm not a vegetarian because I love animals, I'm a vegetarian because I hate vegetables! unknown -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: tapes best for backup?
On Jan 4, 2008, at 6:10 PM, s. keeling wrote: Floppies often became unreadable (when I still used them). I've never run across a CD I couldn't still read, and I've a few old ones. I've had one. I left it in a sunny corner of my desk and the dye layer bleached. I've also had a couple where the label side got physically damaged enough that the reflective aluminum layer was damaged. Both of those were clearly due to careless handling, though. I can't say I've ever had a CD-R that was stored in a cool, dark place and handled gently fail. CD-RWs seem to be a little less reliable. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: tapes best for backup?
s. keeling wrote: I've never run across a CD I couldn't still read, and I've a few old ones. DVD, I would expect to be even better. For me, tape's good enough. Why would you expect DVD to be better? I'd expect it to be worse, for the obvious reasons -- smaller physical bit representations, packed tighter. Also we don't have as much experience with it, so I take what information we *do* have with larger quantities of salt. (Mind you, I'm using DVDs for my photo archives; CDs are simply too small to contemplate. Two copies, stored separately, and all the files stay on the disk (which is mirrored) and get backed up to external disks regularly. I can pretty easily afford for any *one* of the backups to fail.) -- David Dyer-Bennet, [EMAIL PROTECTED]; http://dd-b.net/ Snapshots: http://dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/data/ Photos: http://dd-b.net/photography/gallery/ Dragaera: http://dragaera.info -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: tapes best for backup?
Douglas A. Tutty wrote: On Fri, Jan 04, 2008 at 09:12:19AM -0800, David Brodbeck wrote: On Jan 4, 2008, at 7:38 AM, Larry Irwin wrote: I would not buy a used tape drive. They're finicky mechanical devices and you really want a warranty. Every time I've bought a used tape drive thinking I was getting a good deal it's died within a month. Which puts DLTs out of reach for the home user. Which means that either I archive to less reliable media (CD/DVD, hard disk) or keep everything online and only do backups with no archives. Why do you think DLTs are more reliable than optical media or hard drives? My experience with tapes in general (not DLTs) certainly does not predispose me towards that view, but I suppose DLTs could be different. I've never had a CD or DVD go bad once it passed verification, and some of my cds are from the early 1990s (Kodak Photo CDs). I *have* had tapes in every format I've ever used, from 7-track up to DDS, go bad or be unreadable for other reasons. I've also had a lot of the *drives* go bad, which means I'd probably want two or three before storing anything important on the tape format. -- David Dyer-Bennet, [EMAIL PROTECTED]; http://dd-b.net/ Snapshots: http://dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/data/ Photos: http://dd-b.net/photography/gallery/ Dragaera: http://dragaera.info -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: tapes best for backup?
Douglas A. Tutty wrote: On Fri, Jan 04, 2008 at 04:18:11PM -0600, David Dyer-Bennet wrote: hat I think of as minimum acceptable backup is two offline volumes to accept backups, used alternately. Anything less leaves you with all copies of your data online and vulnerable at once -- to a power surge, lightning strike, malware, or idiot sysadmin (rm -rf /). Right, but this is on-line (or near-line) backup. The data on the media doesn't have to last long, only between backup cycles. What about archives? Or, do you just keep everything on-line (buy more disks for the computer and bigger USB drives for backups) and do backups and never archive anything? I've been relying primarily on offline archives until very recently, but I'm *now* primarily relying on the mirrored disks in the server plus two external backup drives. I keep everything online, disk is so cheap it's silly not to, and keeping track of all the little bits and pieces is much easier in the computer than as physical CDs I have to find to look at an old photo. I currently expect I'll keep making at least one copy of the optical media archives (I used to make two, and I haven't formally stopped making two*yet*) for the off-site copy. Every few years some of it needs to be rethought, since prices and available sizes keep fluctuating. -- David Dyer-Bennet, [EMAIL PROTECTED]; http://dd-b.net/ Snapshots: http://dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/data/ Photos: http://dd-b.net/photography/gallery/ Dragaera: http://dragaera.info -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: tapes best for backup?
Douglas A. Tutty wrote: On Fri, Jan 04, 2008 at 04:18:11PM -0600, David Dyer-Bennet wrote: Paul Cartwright wrote: On Fri January 4 2008, Ron Johnson wrote: so, what would be a good method.. say for instance MY system. my /home is 164 Gb, with 50 Gb free, so I've used 110 Gb. Right now I do the rsync to a 500Gb Mybook USB drive. But I don't keep the drive connected, so I don't do it often enough.. What I think of as minimum acceptable backup is two offline volumes to accept backups, used alternately. Anything less leaves you with all copies of your data online and vulnerable at once -- to a power surge, lightning strike, malware, or idiot sysadmin (rm -rf /). Right, but this is on-line (or near-line) backup. The data on the media doesn't have to last long, only between backup cycles. What about archives? Or, do you just keep everything on-line (buy more disks for the computer and bigger USB drives for backups) and do backups and never archive anything? Archives are on CDs (older) and DVDs (newer), one copy here, one copy at my mother's house. That's a manual process, but I keep it fairly current. -- David Dyer-Bennet, [EMAIL PROTECTED]; http://dd-b.net/ Snapshots: http://dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/data/ Photos: http://dd-b.net/photography/gallery/ Dragaera: http://dragaera.info -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: tapes best for backup?
On Jan 5, 2008, at 12:42 AM, David Brodbeck wrote: I can't say I've ever had a CD-R that was stored in a cool, dark place and handled gently fail. I got curious. So I pulled a couple of CD-Rs from 1997 out of the desk drawer they've been sitting in for the last 9+ years. They were stored in jewel cases, not in paper sleeves, incase that matters. I read every file on both of them with never so much as a head re- calibration. Two snowflakes do not a blizzard make, I understand. But my respect for optical media as archival storage has just taken a small step upwards. As a registered pack-rat, I've got a drawer full of similar old CD- Rs. If I get ambitious and I've got some free time, I'll try a bunch more, just for fun... Rick PS: It took me over a half-hour each to write those CD-Rs, 9 years ago. I read both of them today in under 8 minutes total. Ahhh, progress! -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
tapes best for backup?
One of the threads over at [EMAIL PROTECTED] has gone OT (for them) into discussing backup media. The concensus there seems to be that tape (e.g. DLT) is still the best for long-term storage (e.g. archives) because CD/DVDs fade rather quickly while hard drives get bit rot over the years and since they're not being run frequently you don't see error messages appearing. I'm wondering what people here on DU use. Lets say the archive size is 7 GB. It could fit on one DVD; one(?) or two USB sticks, SD cards, etc; an old spare hard drive or a new dedicated hard drive in (presumably) an external (USB, firewire, eSATA?) case. Do people still use tape? I note that the drive prices for used drives on eBay are quite low but then most (?) would need to add the appropriate scsi card since I doubt they would be SATA compatible. Other than rsyncing to another box, what do people use for put-it-on-the-shelf archiving? Doug. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: tapes best for backup?
On Thu, 3 Jan 2008, Douglas A. Tutty wrote: One of the threads over at [EMAIL PROTECTED] has gone OT (for them) into discussing backup media. The concensus there seems to be that tape (e.g. DLT) is still the best for long-term storage (e.g. archives) because CD/DVDs fade rather quickly while hard drives get bit rot over the years and since they're not being run frequently you don't see error messages appearing. I'm wondering what people here on DU use. Lets say the archive size is 7 GB. It could fit on one DVD; one(?) or two USB sticks, SD cards, etc; an old spare hard drive or a new dedicated hard drive in (presumably) an external (USB, firewire, eSATA?) case. Do people still use tape? I note that the drive prices for used drives on eBay are quite low but then most (?) would need to add the appropriate scsi card since I doubt they would be SATA compatible. Other than rsyncing to another box, what do people use for put-it-on-the-shelf archiving? I use DDS4 drives: one at work, one at home. The ones I have are USB which is nice. They work out-of-the-box with standard st driver in the kernel. http://h18003.www1.hp.com/products/storageworks/dat40usb/index.html Andy -- Andrew J Perrin - andrew_perrin (at) unc.edu - http://perrin.socsci.unc.edu Associate Professor of Sociology; Book Review Editor, _Social Forces_ University of North Carolina - CB#3210, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3210 USA -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: tapes best for backup?
On Thu, 3 Jan 2008 21:30:57 -0500 Douglas A. Tutty [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: One of the threads over at [EMAIL PROTECTED] has gone OT (for them) into discussing backup media. The concensus there seems to be that tape (e.g. DLT) is still the best for long-term storage (e.g. archives) because CD/DVDs fade rather quickly while hard drives get bit rot over the years and since they're not being run frequently you don't see error messages appearing. I'm wondering what people here on DU use. Lets say the archive size is 7 GB. It could fit on one DVD; one(?) or two USB sticks, SD cards, etc; an old spare hard drive or a new dedicated hard drive in (presumably) an external (USB, firewire, eSATA?) case. Do people still use tape? I note that the drive prices for used drives on eBay are quite low but then most (?) would need to add the appropriate scsi card since I doubt they would be SATA compatible. Other than rsyncing to another box, what do people use for put-it-on-the-shelf archiving? Doug. Tape here. -- Raquel The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts. --Bertrand Russell -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: tapes best for backup?
On Thu, 3 Jan 2008 18:56:01 -0800 Raquel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thu, 3 Jan 2008 21:30:57 -0500 Douglas A. Tutty [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: One of the threads over at [EMAIL PROTECTED] has gone OT (for them) into discussing backup media. The concensus there seems to be that tape (e.g. DLT) is still the best for long-term storage (e.g. archives) because CD/DVDs fade rather quickly while hard drives get bit rot over the years and since they're not being run frequently you don't see error messages appearing. I'm wondering what people here on DU use. Lets say the archive size is 7 GB. It could fit on one DVD; one(?) or two USB sticks, SD cards, etc; an old spare hard drive or a new dedicated hard drive in (presumably) an external (USB, firewire, eSATA?) case. Do people still use tape? I note that the drive prices for used drives on eBay are quite low but then most (?) would need to add the appropriate scsi card since I doubt they would be SATA compatible. Other than rsyncing to another box, what do people use for put-it-on-the-shelf archiving? Doug. Tape here. -- Raquel I guess I should have added: DDS-4, SCSI -- Raquel Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. --Blaise Pascal -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: tapes best for backup?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 01/03/08 20:30, Douglas A. Tutty wrote: One of the threads over at [EMAIL PROTECTED] has gone OT (for them) into discussing backup media. The concensus there seems to be that tape (e.g. DLT) is still the best for long-term storage (e.g. archives) Do they even make new DLT 8000 drives anymore? We are happy with SuperDLT2 drives, but are transitioning to LTO3. because CD/DVDs fade rather quickly while hard drives get bit rot over the years and since they're not being run frequently you don't see error messages appearing. I'm wondering what people here on DU use. Lets say the archive size is 7 GB. It could fit on one DVD; one(?) or two USB sticks, SD cards, etc; 7GB? That was a lot in 1992, when DLT-III was king, but now DLT IV is ancient, and 7GB is -- bluntly -- chickenfeed. an old spare hard drive or a new dedicated hard drive in (presumably) an external (USB, firewire, eSATA?) case. Do people still use tape? I note that the drive prices for used drives on eBay are quite low but then most (?) would need to add the appropriate scsi card since I doubt they would be SATA compatible. What kind? DLT8000 drives have been around now for 15 years Other than rsyncing to another box, what do people use for put-it-on-the-shelf archiving? How important is the data? Personal or commercial? If a reputable archival company like Iron Mountain offers on-line storage, then I'd encrypt it and drop it on their servers. - -- Ron Johnson, Jr. Jefferson LA USA I'm not a vegetarian because I love animals, I'm a vegetarian because I hate vegetables! unknown -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFHfa5jS9HxQb37XmcRAjJBAKDhP8t4J3ylUVot71sr5cdId2GoBgCgn44L qOKiJu1gAY6NPbbH9Q+b5p8= =pbfQ -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
