Reuben D. Budiardja wrote:
Hello,
I'm wondering if people could give me suggestion about the most economical
ways to archive data more permanently. Often time we want to clean up some
harddrive from machines in our offices, and we want to archive the data first
before we wipe it out, just in case we need them in the future, though
unlikely. What's the best way to do this in cases like that ? I am talking
about 20GB - 75GB size data maybe.
What I've done so far is just tar-bzip2-ed all the files and directory to a
single .tar.bz2 file. Then I am planning to use 'split' to split it and then
write them to like CD or DVD, but this could easily takes many discs. Are
there any other more economical ways ?
Thank you for any help.
RDB
Having done some stuff with RAR files, I would be tempted to make
archives on DVD by using RAR files. As these can be rebuilt if planned
properly.
There are questions about the life of DVD's but they are very cheap and
you could make multiple copies.
I do agree with tape but I have had problems with tape archives and this
would concern me.
Also, if the data needs to be protected for years, then check the data
from time to time.
As stated by others, having a drive and software that can read the data
is one issue. The other is the format of the data. It doesn't do much
good to have the files if you don't have the software to read it.
I use DVD's and planning on using RAR at home and work.
--
Robin Laing
