At 02:02 +1000 10/26/2005, Peter Breis wrote:
Systematically backing up to CD still seems the best option. I have
a dual layer
DVD burner but have seen reports of up to 30% of DVD-Rs have errors.
This supports my statement that every backup system has its own mix
of advantages and disadvantages. The big disadvantage to CD, IMO, is
that most people won't ever run a backup if they must sit there and
swap scores of media. At less than a GB per CD, it would take an
awful lot of CDs to do a backup. Incremental backups are not as bad
of course.
But CD will be the best choice for folks who like its mix of features.
Tapes are a very inconvenient and expensive back-up option. They need
exercising and comprehensively labeling their contents is
difficult. Spooling
through a long tape just to get at a simple file is tedious.
I'm not sure what you mean by the above. DAT (reportedly) has a
shelf life of about 30 years. I've used 10 year-old tapes reliably.
No "exercising" required. The only maintenance requirement for DAT
is to run a cleaning tape through the drive every 15 - 20 hours of
use. This is important. Folks I've met who complain about DAT
reliability also answer, "What's that?" when I ask them if they
remembered to use a cleaning tape regularly. :-)
At $2 per 12 GB (DDS3) raw capacity tape, it has one of the lowest,
if not the lowest, cost per GB of any backup solution. The media is
cheap and physically compact.
I do agree that new tape drives are expensive--prohibitively so for
the home user, which is why I recommend the used market for the tape
drive.
One does not comprehensively label the tapes. One lets software like
Retrospect keep track of what's on which tape and then Retrospect
asks for the tape by name, which one has written on the tape.
Something like 2005, Set 1, Tape A or 2004, Set A, Tape 2 or however
one likes to do such things. I start a new set of tapes every
calendar year and archive last year's tapes (put them in the closet).
I run two or three sets. Each set may have one to four tapes in it
(started at 1, currently up to 4, expect to go higher soon) depending
on how much capacity my computer needs for all its hard drive
contents.
So the only labels needed are which storage set is this (e.g. 2005,
Set 1) and which tape within the storage set is this (e.g. Tape A, B
or C). Retrospect keeps track of which file is where.
If I have a hard drive crash that destroys Retrospect's index, I
won't be looking for an individual file, I'll be doing a full restore
from the complete set of tapes. If the very low probability event
occurs that destroys just Retrospect's index (Storage Set File), I
can recreate the storage set file by feeding Retrospect the relevant
tapes. While this latter function is tedious, it is also so rare, I
almost didn't bother to mention the possibility.
It does take longer to spool through an entire tape to get at a
single file. There's no doubt about that. If I ask Restrospect to
recover a single file and then insert the tape, it could take up to 2
minutes for it to wind the tape to that file. I don't find that to
be a problem, but some folks might.
The best backup system for any given person, is the one that that
person will actually use. Obviously, tape is the backup for me.
YMMV.
Jeff Walther
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