On Sat, 2008-02-09 at 14:10 -0500, Robert L Cochran wrote: > Peter Arremann wrote: > > On Saturday 09 February 2008, Valent Turkovic wrote: > > > >> I asked for a backup to DVDs, I need a cheap solution for chunks of > >> 50GB every month. > >> > > > > Even then reliability of media and writers is likely not going to make you > > happy. Dual layer is tempting but the reliability of those is even worse than > > regular media. > > > > You haven't said anything about the type of data you have. How well does it > > compress with bzip or 7zip? > > > > LTO1 media are pretty reliable if you can keep the temperature at the right > > levels. They can be had pretty cheaply on ebay these days - 100GB a piece. > > > > Peter. > > > > > I'm confused -- what is the advantage of using tape media (that is what > LTO-1 is, right?) over a hard disk? How does the cost compare to just > buying an external USB hard drive? ---- tape has 2 advantages... 1 - portability 2 - multi-state Multi-state means you can have multiple copies, archive versions, various copies over time. That doesn't mean you can't do the same with external hard drives, but external hard drives require a bit more planning and probably more cost. I like to have several layers of backup. RAID - initial redundancy...keeps you up and running Tape or hard drive - rotational redundancy, several weeks of rotation which gives me several copies of the same files Tape or hard drive - archive redundancy, snapshots retained at various time increments Craig
