[WBEL-users] Backups?

[John Morris]

On Sun, 20 Jun 2004, Paul wrote:

> I have a similar setup & situation (2x80GB Mirrored)... currently we
> 
> The tape drive cost $900 and the tapes are $65 each ... using hard
> drives as back would end up costing the same.  The only thing I can
> think off as a drawback is hot swapping the hard drives some IDE cards
> support it.
> 
> Anybody tried firewire hard drives??

Actually, it looks like hard drives would be less expensive in your
situation.  Assuming you have at least a half dozen tapes I get $1290 for
drive plus six tapes.  That works out to $215 per drive if you already
have a firewire port or $210 if you need to pick up a card at Walmart.
(The highest price you would likely pay for a PCI Firewire card.)  You
only have 80GB to backup so spring for a 200GB from a reputable online
vendor for ~$140 and a firewire case for ~$50 and you still have budget
for shipping.  With the additional storage you can do rolling backups and
be able to set your wayback machine farther into the past if you don't
notice a mistake for a few weeks.

One warning with firewire though.  RH doesn't like Firewire, doesn't
support it and didn't consider it a problem when FC2 shipped without
Firewire support.  You can make it work with WBEL3 but it is a fair bit of
trouble and considering the upstream situation there are no promises it
will remain working, especially come WBEL4.  I'm speaking as someone with
seven firewire drives in rotation as backup media and pondering options
for the future.

-- 
John M.      http://www.beau.org/~jmorris        This post is 100% M$ Free!
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