[plug] removable media backup drives

[Ben Jensz]

> Which drives handle that? IDE can get *very* upset when hot
> swapped by anything other a combo sync/umount/sleep - and
> even then the system doesn't like it much.
>
> Could you forward a link to the list for the scripts? Either
> way, I wouldn't mind seeing if I've missed something.
>
> Craig Foster
> fostware at iinet.net.au

Thanks Jeremy, but that leaves me with the same question as Craig above.  I
thought hot swapping an IDE hard disk on a standard machine would make it
get upset?  I do have an identical 80Gb IDE hard disk as is in the machine
with which to use for that if I needed to.

But I was thinking of re-setting up that machine to do software
RAID/mirroring across the two 80Gb drives (if thats possible of course) for
redundancy purposes, and then do backups to an appropriate tape drive to be
removed from the premises once the backup is done.  Because the issue with
doing it onto a hard disk, is that if someone accidentally deleted something
and then doesn't realise for a day or two, then it won't be retrievable as
you're doing the backup daily and simply mirroring whats there/not there.
Unless you had multiple hard disks of course :).

The only tape drives I'm seeing that would be up to the job, are for a
30Gb-40Gb (which would take multiple tapes to do the backup onto as it gets
more stuff on it) for around about $2500 for the drive, plus tapes.  Then
for an 80Gb drive that would cover it in one tape, its around the
$6000-$8000 mark, which is well out of the price range I'm looking at.

The other option is to stick the spare 80Gb hard disk into another machine
in another building and mirror it across the network in the middle of the
night.  But the problem with that, is that our backbone cabling between
buildings is still copper, so if any surge that zapped the file server
through the network would also zap the other machine as well.  So I'm
preferably after something that can be removed from the premises, that
someone (probably me), takes home of a night.

And of course it _has_ to work under Linux... :)


/ Ben