[plug] Tape backup solution?

[Bernd Felsche]

Fred Janon <fjanon at yahoo.com> wrote:

>Since a thread was started on RAID, I was wondering if someone
>knows where the tape backup solutions are now. What the tapes
>capacities are and what approximate cost for the drive and the
>tapes. I am doing backups on CDs and DVDs but I cannot backup
>entire drives anymore.

Amongst the best are LTO .. LTO3 is "affordable" at about
$1000/drive and $50/800GB tape.

A viable alternative is external 500GB or 1TB HDD on USB.
They're between $100 and $200 each. Not quite as fast as LTO on
their own SCSI/Fibre interface, but not too bad on a good USB
controller. Do make sure that you blow away the FATs on the HDD
before you start.

If you've got a "serious" system to backup, use something like
bacula to manage the backups and the restores. bacula uses a DB to
record what's been backed up and "file versions". This facilitates
backing up many generations of the same file on the same media --
space permitting.
-- 
/"\ Bernd Felsche - Innovative Reckoning, Perth, Western Australia
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