Re: Tape/DVD Backup Suggestions?

On Wed, Jul 17, 2002 at 04:48:10PM -0500, Nathan Mueller wrote:
> > Are there
> > systems like with these features that could handle say 20 Gigs per
> > media?
>
> Where I work we just started using a new disk based backup system that
> we wrote in-house.  Disk is a little bit cheaper then tape -- plus much
> faster.  Another bonus is that your compression rate does not depend on
> how fast your data is flowing.  I'd suggest you buy a few 160GB IDE
> drives and just dump your data there.  It's faster, easier and you don't
> need to change tapes.  If you're interested in the source to our system
> just let me know.

I advise against hard disk based backups:

It's not cheap, sure, a tape drive is expensive, but the tapes are quite
cheap.

The cheapness of the tapes allows you to use several for different
backup strategies (weekly and daily incremental and monthly full backup, for
example) and to keep older data on saved tapes.

It's easier. There are programs like Arkeia (free for one linux server and
two clients (win32/linux)), that makes tape and backup management a few
clicks (but a read of documentation is still needed). As a side note,
Arkeia supports direct dumping and backup from serveral rdbms, postgresql
included.

It's more reliable. If the backup disk fails, all backup is lost and its
substitution an hassle. If a tape breaks you still have the other tapes
for last week/day/etc.. Still, a tape drive can fail or a tape can screw
the drive, but I haven't heard of anyone to whom that has happened. In
hardware world, quality normally comes with an higher price.

That being said, I don't have a tape. Too much for my pocket. :)
So I made a script that creates, compress, splits and burns backups to
cds. I'll made a switch to dvds when the price for dvd recorders drops to
EUR 100 and dvd blank discs to EUR 2...

Your solution is still a valid one, but more a special case for those
without too much $$...

Regards,
Luciano Rocha

--
Consciousness: that annoying time between naps.