Tape Backup

Arno Wagner wrote:

High reliability, high lifetime, medium cost, low capacity:
- MOD (3.5"), DVD-RAM

To long-term store lower volumes of critical (family photos,
diploma thesis, etc.) data use MOD or DVD-RAM.

Is that DVD-RAM in an original unopened cartridge only or would you
include DVD-RAM without a cartridge if it is handled carefully?
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until he either jumps up in the air to bat at it or zooms around
in a circle until he gets too dizzy to stand up. What is cruel about
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Arno Wagner wrote:

High reliability, high lifetime, medium cost, low capacity:
- MOD (3.5"), DVD-RAM

To long-term store lower volumes of critical (family photos,
diploma thesis, etc.) data use MOD or DVD-RAM.

Is that DVD-RAM in an original unopened cartridge only or would you
include DVD-RAM without a cartridge if it is handled carefully?
--
I am TERRIBLY cruel to my cat. I tease him with a vine tendril
until he either jumps up in the air to bat at it or zooms around
in a circle until he gets too dizzy to stand up. What is cruel about
it is that I don't do it nearly as much as he wants me to.


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Arno Wagner wrote:

High reliability, high lifetime, medium cost, low capacity:
- MOD (3.5"), DVD-RAM

To long-term store lower volumes of critical (family photos,
diploma thesis, etc.) data use MOD or DVD-RAM.

Is that DVD-RAM in an original unopened cartridge only or would you
include DVD-RAM without a cartridge if it is handled carefully?
--
I am TERRIBLY cruel to my cat. I tease him with a vine tendril
until he either jumps up in the air to bat at it or zooms around
in a circle until he gets too dizzy to stand up. What is cruel about
it is that I don't do it nearly as much as he wants me to.

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage Daniel Prince wrote:
Arno Wagner wrote:

High reliability, high lifetime, medium cost, low capacity:
- MOD (3.5"), DVD-RAM

To long-term store lower volumes of critical (family photos,
diploma thesis, etc.) data use MOD or DVD-RAM.

Is that DVD-RAM in an original unopened cartridge only or would you
include DVD-RAM without a cartridge if it is handled carefully?

DVD-RAM is a good solution, but not as reliable as MOD. MOD
is allways with cartridge and verify after each write.

With DVD-RAM you get either, but usually not both, i.e. cartridges
don't need to be verified by the drive and blank disks need to be but
do not have a cartridge.

Personally if the disk is handled only with gloves and stored in
a dark place, cartridge-less DVD-RAM should be o.k., but note that
they only have 100.000 certified write cycles.

Arno
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wrote in message
oups.com...
I am looking for opinions on what a decent tape backup for a PC
workstation might be, somewhere around 40 gigs or so, speed is not the
biggest issue, mostly being reasonablly priced and around 40 gigs (give
or take a few). I'm wondering what people think the better brands are
for this type of applications, and if possible, a suggestion on a
model.

Thanks

Exabyte VXA-2 fits your bill. Pricewatch lists them for just under $800. You
can then use X10 tapes for 35GB native, and once you need them, use X23
tapes to get 80GB native.

Rob

On 01/16/2005 11:51 AM Rob Turk wrote:

wrote in message
roups.com...


I am looking for opinions on what a decent tape backup for a PC
workstation might be, somewhere around 40 gigs or so, speed is not the
biggest issue, mostly being reasonablly priced and around 40 gigs (give
or take a few). I'm wondering what people think the better brands are
for this type of applications, and if possible, a suggestion on a
model.

Thanks



Exabyte VXA-2 fits your bill. Pricewatch lists them for just under $800. You
can then use X10 tapes for 35GB native, and once you need them, use X23
tapes to get 80GB native.

Rob




Rob,

How fortunate for you that your personal finances permit you to see
"just under $800." as affordable. I am not quite sure that the OP would
agree. I certainly don't. Affordable to me is $200. and that's why I
am now looking at external HDD.

--
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Brian M. Kochera
"Some mistakes are too much fun to only make once!"
View My Web Page: http://home.earthlink.net/~brian1951

"Brian K" wrote in message
.net...

Exabyte VXA-2 fits your bill. Pricewatch lists them for just under $800.
You can then use X10 tapes for 35GB native, and once you need them, use
X23 tapes to get 80GB native.

Rob

Rob,

How fortunate for you that your personal finances permit you to see "just
under $800." as affordable. I am not quite sure that the OP would agree.
I certainly don't. Affordable to me is $200. and that's why I am now
looking at external HDD.

OP was asking for a tape option (See subject: Tape Backup). VXA-2 is as
affordable as it gets for a reliable tape drive in the capacity range he
asked for. $800 is a lot of money and you'll need to invest another $150 in
a set of tapes, but that buys you a lot of protection.

HDD backup isn't bad for casual safety copies of your data, but it isn't
backup. For real backup you will want to go back a number of versions
("whoops, that file got corrupted two weeks ago.."), and you want to store
at least one copy off-site. If it's just your personal MP3 collection, then
HDD is fine. If you want multiple versions of your backup then you may have
to get multiple drives. That's $200 plus another $200, plus maybe another
$200.... If you get hit by a virus while you backup drive is attached, poof
goes your backup. If you drop your harddisk, poof goes your backup. If your
house gets hit by a lightning strike, poof goes your backup. And one
arguement often overlooked, an external HDD attracts a lot of unwanted
attention from uninvited guests, poof goes your backup. Tapes on the other
hand are 'dull', unattractive and will rarely be stolen by a casual thieve.

If it's your tax administration, your current consultancy projects, your
source code, your thesis, your latest novel or your entire customer
administration then a tape drive and a decent backup strategy is money well
spent. If $800 is too much, then maybe a VXA-1 will do, or you can try to
find a deal at eBay.

Rob

"Rob Turk" writes:
OP was asking for a tape option (See subject: Tape Backup). VXA-2 is as
affordable as it gets for a reliable tape drive in the capacity range he
asked for. $800 is a lot of money and you'll need to invest another $150 in
a set of tapes, but that buys you a lot of protection.

HDD backup isn't bad for casual safety copies of your data, but it isn't
backup. For real backup you will want to go back a number of versions
("whoops, that file got corrupted two weeks ago.."), and you want to store
at least one copy off-site. If it's just your personal MP3 collection, then
HDD is fine. If you want multiple versions of your backup then you may have
to get multiple drives. That's $200 plus another $200, plus maybe another
$200....

Well, $200 gets you around 300 GB of hard disc space. VXA2 X23 tape
is $85/80GB so to back up the same amount of data on tape, you spend
over $300 just on the blank tape.

If you get hit by a virus while you backup drive is attached, poof
goes your backup. If you drop your harddisk, poof goes your backup. If your
house gets hit by a lightning strike, poof goes your backup.

True, and just leaving HD's sitting around long enough often results
in them failing when you spin them up again.

And one arguement often overlooked, an external HDD attracts a lot
of unwanted attention from uninvited guests, poof goes your
backup. Tapes on the other hand are 'dull', unattractive and will
rarely be stolen by a casual thieve.

Also a good point--keep them hidden away or locked up.

If $800 is too much, then maybe a VXA-1 will do, or you can try to
find a deal at eBay.

Here's a new LTO-1 for $625:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...tem=5156973017

If it's your tax administration, your current consultancy
projects, your source code, your thesis, your latest novel or your
entire customer administration then a tape drive and a decent
backup strategy is money well spent. If $800 is too much, then
maybe a VXA-1 will do, or you can try to find a deal at eBay.

I don't know about customer administration but the other examples
sound like such small amounts of data that you might just encrypt
them and upload them to your ISP.

Rob Turk wrote:

"Brian K" wrote in message
.net...

Exabyte VXA-2 fits your bill. Pricewatch lists them for just under $800.
You can then use X10 tapes for 35GB native, and once you need them, use
X23 tapes to get 80GB native.

Rob

Rob,

How fortunate for you that your personal finances permit you to see "just
under $800." as affordable. I am not quite sure that the OP would agree.
I certainly don't. Affordable to me is $200. and that's why I am now
looking at external HDD.

OP was asking for a tape option (See subject: Tape Backup). VXA-2 is as
affordable as it gets for a reliable tape drive in the capacity range he
asked for. $800 is a lot of money and you'll need to invest another $150
in a set of tapes, but that buys you a lot of protection.

HDD backup isn't bad for casual safety copies of your data, but it isn't
backup. For real backup you will want to go back a number of versions
("whoops, that file got corrupted two weeks ago.."), and you want to store
at least one copy off-site.

And disk prevents you from doing this how?

If it's just your personal MP3 collection,
then HDD is fine. If you want multiple versions of your backup then you
may have to get multiple drives. That's $200 plus another $200, plus maybe
another $200....

$200 gets you a 300 gig drive. 40 gig drives go for about 50 bucks, a
little less than a V17 tape.

If you get hit by a virus while you backup drive is
attached, poof goes your backup.

And how is copying infected files to a tape superior to copying them to a
disk?

If you drop your harddisk, poof goes your
backup.

If you drop it hard enough in its shock-mounted caddy to exceed 350 g
acceleration then "poof" goes that day's backup. If you leave the tape on
top of your car and drive off poof there goes your backup too. If you
can't afford to lose one day's backup to damaged media then you need to
pursue a parallel backup strategy.

If your house gets hit by a lightning strike, poof goes your
backup.

And there is something magic about tape that makes it immune to the intense
magnetic fields that go with a lightning strike? How is it that a disk,
with its much higher coercivity and its metal shell all around the media
manages to get damaged while a tape survives?

This is one reason you retain an off-site backup.

And one arguement often overlooked, an external HDD attracts a lot
of unwanted attention from uninvited guests, poof goes your backup. Tapes
on the other hand are 'dull', unattractive and will rarely be stolen by a
casual thieve.

So? This is another reason you maintain an off-site backup. In any case, a
disk in a caddy generally doesn't look too sexy either.

If it's your tax administration, your current consultancy projects, your
source code, your thesis, your latest novel or your entire customer
administration then a tape drive and a decent backup strategy is money
well spent. If $800 is too much, then maybe a VXA-1 will do, or you can
try to find a deal at eBay.

So who is better off, the guy with an 800 buck tape drive and one tape, or
the guy with 16 disks in caddys that he's running a two-week rotation
backup on?

You seem to be assuming that someone performing disk-based backup will only
spend 40 bucks for one disk but will spend over a thousand for a tape drive
and tapes. That's not the alternative, the altnernative is to use a bunch
of 50 buck tapes and an 800 buck drive or use a bunch of 50 buck disks that
don't need a separate drive.

Rob

--
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

"J. Clarke" writes:
If you get hit by a virus while you backup drive is
attached, poof goes your backup.

And how is copying infected files to a tape superior to copying them to a
disk?

I think the idea is that you could have an uninfected backup drive
attached to your PC when the virus runs, the virus can wipe out the
backup drive even though you weren't doing a backup at the time.

The solution is if you're backing up to HD's, use removable HD's and
make sure they're actually removed except when a backup is in
progress.

If your house gets hit by a lightning strike, poof goes your backup.

And there is something magic about tape that makes it immune to the intense
magnetic fields that go with a lightning strike? How is it that a disk,
with its much higher coercivity and its metal shell all around the media
manages to get damaged while a tape survives?

The magnetic files aren't THAT strong. Neither the disk platters nor
the tape gets erased. The lightning fries the drive electronics (disk
or tape), not the media. With a disk, once the electronics are fried,
you can't read the platters any more, without some ultra-expensive
data recovery attempt that isn't successful all that often. With
tape, you just put the tape into another drive and read it normally.

You seem to be assuming that someone performing disk-based backup will only
spend 40 bucks for one disk but will spend over a thousand for a tape drive
and tapes. That's not the alternative, the altnernative is to use a bunch
of 50 buck tapes and an 800 buck drive or use a bunch of 50 buck disks that
don't need a separate drive.

I dunno about 50 buck discs, I think you have to spend a bit more if
you want external enclosures. If you just mean those pull-out caddy
type discs, you have to power down your PC when you install or remove
one of those things, which makes backup considerably less convenient.

Tape really does seem to be superior for backup, and VXA drives are
pretty good technology. Their main drawback is that the tapes are so
expensive. Right now I back up to HD, but am looking towards LTO.
LTO-3 has just started shipping (400 GB native!) and perhaps as a
result, there's been quite a drop in the cost of LTO-{1,2} drives and
media over the past few months.