I have a similar problem and solved it this way:
I got an old Compaq server from e-bay. populated it with a bunch of high
capacity SATA drives and a SATA controller. Some limited sheet metal
mods and a bit of velcro made it all fit.
Next loaded Linux on a small drive, 40GB. Made a soft RAID 5 array out
of the other drives, 2TB.
I setup RSYNC to run on different places and put them in the appropriate
CRON directory.
I setup a RSYNCD in each of the systems I wanted to backup. There is a
great Windows version.
The system has been on line for a year. One SATA drive died and I
hot-swapped it and continued on.
The key is cheap drives, rsync and Linux. The whole deal set me back
less than a tape library.
Mike
Robert L Cochran wrote:
Frank Cox wrote:
On Sat, 09 Feb 2008 22:33:00 +0100
Valent Turkovic <valent.turkovic@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
You see, there are some of us who don't have money or don't want to give
it and are willing to find a different solution :)
Ah, but these days I back up my systems to an Intel SS-4000E fileserver. And on
my old BBS, I got a Colorado tape backup system pretty much as soon as they
became available.
Point being, something like your scheme might do as a very short-term solution,
but it won't take very long before you're looking for a real backup solution
that doesn't take so much effort. Or you will start looking for excuses to not
do your backup on the original schedule you had planned.
All of my backups are done for me, automatically and painlessly, overnight.
It took a bit of effort (and yes, a few dollars) to set things up this way but
I wouldn't have it any other way, now.
I wonder why Valent has got to have DVD media? That's the interesting
part -- the insistence on DVD. If one can afford a "home server" plus 1
Tb disk storage plus an internet connection then I reason one can afford
a USB external hard drive too. So it is hard to believe money is the issue.
Bob Cochran
