[Gllug] Tape backups

[James Hawtin]

I think people don't understand the difference between Archives and
Backups. They do a backup of something then wonder why years later there is
nothing readable (because they were stored in a shoebox on top of the
boiler). Backups you can just dump everything+Increments, repeat the process
regularly enough and you don't need to worry about some of the tapes
failing. Archives, are the final resting place for data, this should be
stored in careful conditions, on more than one brand of media, preferabily
using more than one technology, the archives should be regularly checked,
transfering to new media as the technology becomes available.

As you can see that is alot of work. Having said that alot of people
"archives" are:- they have spent alot of time doing something and don't really want
to throw it away, so want to save it but don;t really care if they never see
it again. (Myself include in this one) I expcect alot of data on large
drives is like this.

Personally I have an LTO4 drive, and find the biggest problem with it is
that my hard drives are not fast enough writting data to it. 800GB on a tape
is a reasonable ammount I feel. Yes I know you can get a 2TB drive these
days, however I would prefer smaller faster drives. 2TB is alot to lose/try
to rescue if you have a problem. Yes mirroring can save against physical
problems, 2TB would take along time to remirror (what if the second fails in
that time). It also does not protect against stupidity like rm -fr * in the
wrong place. Drives connected to the same machine can have the same problem,
for me however any backup system must have removal media (be it disk or
tape) have more than one copy generation, have an off-line as well as online
component and have one generations stored off site. (to protect against fire/thief) 

James
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