Unfortunately no one can be told what fun_plug is - you have to see it for yourself.
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We know we need to backup our data. But what are the solutions available?
1. Tape Backup
2. DVD Writer
3. Other Harddrives -- Not a backup solution. Vulnerable to viruses, accidents, and any sort of concussions.
Looking at the prices of drives on Pricewatch (man those things have gotten cheaper!) it's nice to see some sub-500$ DAT 72 drives. Does anyone have any particular recommendations, or any other suggestions for a home network backup solution?
Cheers,
--G
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My DNS323 was intended to be my backup device. It lives at the other end of my house to the computers that I back up to, and the distance between them minimise the risk of the DNS323 and computers all getting stolen or burned at the same time :-)
However, since owning the thing for a few weeks I'm impressed with what I could do with it, and have already started using it as primary storage for MP3s, served out via Twonky/UPnP. To keep my MP3s safe I use sync toy to keep that data mirrored on my desk top. An advantage to doing that is that I can use the "Previous Versions" feature of Windows Vista to grab accidentally changed or deleted files.
Personally I found tape backup too expensive and inconvenient, and DVDs are too small to cope with the amount of data that I have floating around now (system disk images, file backups, ...) Maybe you need another DNS323 :-)
A small part of my data gets backed up off-site (ftp), and every now and again I burn my family video/pictures to DVD and stash them off-site. If I ever need to use those backups, I'll have bigger things to worry about than my MP3s ;-)
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Gambit
Tape and DVD are as susceptible to viruses, accidents and "concussion" as hard disk drives - DVD also has their own range of problems - have you ever heard of DVD rot.
The industry at large is moving towards disk-to-disk or D2D backup and several manufacturers have brought out removable disk subsystems to facilitate this - take a look at Imation's Odyssey, Tandberg RDX (also marketed as the Dell RD1000 & IBM GoVault).
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Check out these possibilities:
http://dns323.kood.org/forum/t1150-Tuto … night.html
http://backupnetclone.sourceforge.net/ (especially http://backupnetclone.sourceforge.net/philosophy.html)
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fordem wrote:
Gambit
Tape and DVD are as susceptible to viruses, accidents and "concussion" as hard disk drives - DVD also has their own range of problems - have you ever heard of DVD rot.
The industry at large is moving towards disk-to-disk or D2D backup and several manufacturers have brought out removable disk subsystems to facilitate this - take a look at Imation's Odyssey, Tandberg RDX (also marketed as the Dell RD1000 & IBM GoVault).
Tape and DVD are no-where near as suceptible to viruses as a hard disk drive is. Neither one is a "native" storage format (well, DVD is approaching that) that the OS can casually r/w to without the use of special drives, programs, or other aids. Additionally, since they are slow, any virus writing to them would be severely penalized (not to mention the user wondering why the tape drive is suddenly spinning up).
And yes, DVD media has a problem with chemical degradation; some people say that it's a thing of the past, though, and that some DVD lifespans can be measured in decades.
What you probably mean is that you could have viruses infecting the programs that you've backed up to tape. That is, of course, why you have older backups, scan the content as it comes off the media, and so forth. With a harddrive, however, the wrong virus could easily, swiftly, and without notice eliminate or damage the entire contents of the drive in a very generic, portable, and random fashion. Definitely a common payload for virii in the wild.
The D2D backup solutions solve a bit of that by providing effectively offline backup in a remote chassis with the harddrive carts. However, they are very expensive (close to $2/GB) and are entirely dependent on the lifetime of a SATA drive itself. Tape has an estimated lifetime of 15-30 years; I can't imagine a SATA disk drive with the corresponding several orders of magnitude more complex mechanisms approaching that.
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Gambit wrote:
The D2D backup solutions solve a bit of that by providing effectively offline backup in a remote chassis with the harddrive carts. However, they are very expensive (close to $2/GB) and are entirely dependent on the lifetime of a SATA drive itself. Tape has an estimated lifetime of 15-30 years; I can't imagine a SATA disk drive with the corresponding several orders of magnitude more complex mechanisms approaching that.
Durability test results done by Percept Technology Labs, an independent testing & consulting company, indicate that SATA disk based cartridges used in Dell's PowerVault RD1000, when stored in moderately controlled conditions (78°F with 95 percent noncondensing relative humidity) can provide a potential life expectancy of 30 years or more. In stringently controlled conditions (68°F with 30 percent relative humidity), the results indicated that this potential life expectancy can increase to 100 years or more—well over the typical requirements for long-term enterprise data storage.
http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/po … roStor.pdf
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