Hi Roger and all, > I have an LG DVD writer, but haven't been able to reliably do data backups I am setting up some systems using DVD-RAM for backup. I haven't had any trouble yet, but your comments make me very nervous. Do you get I/O errors? System problems? Corrupted backup media with no error detected? Or is it just the samba problem that you already mentioned? > I have like 4GB data to backup daily and I make 1 single big tar that > then convert to iso file On my system: tar -cf /dev/cdrom1 stuff works just fine (with DVD-RAM media). There are two disadvantages: You couldn't easily read the backup on another platform, and you can't put more than one tar on a disk. > Should I split the tar in smaller files ? IMO that wouldn't help (and you'd need multiple DVDs if you used the method above). You could format the DVD-RAM as a UDF filesystem, and could then write multiple files to it with tar, just like a hard drive. > can anyone pls post the mkisofs and cdrecord command lines that you are > using, or the script file you use for data backup for DVD ? Sorry, have not used either of those programs. > also I noticed that while Linux is burning the DVD I cant access the > samba shares. after the DVD is finished burning I get all working back. > > I am using 2 HD mounted as master on each controller with software RAID1 > configuration and the DVD is mounted as slave with one of the disks > Try connecting the DVD to a separate controller (on motherboard or a PCI card). I am using a Matsushita (Panasonic) DVD-RAM SW-9572. It can accept RAM media in cartridges, which IMO will provide better long term reliability, especially if your operators handle disks carelessly. Like most DVD-RAM drives, the firmware reads the data after it is written, and reallocates sectors if the readback does not show a sufficient margin of additional error correction capability. The measured throughput of the SW-9572 is about 1.6 MB/second on writes, 4.0 MB/second on reads. --Stewart
