[WBEL-users] Re: Re: Backups? (John Morris)

[Kay Diederichs]

>Message: 5
>Date: Mon, 21 Jun 2004 16:50:44 -0500 (CDT)
>From: John Morris <jmorris@beau.org>
>To: Paul <subsolar@subsolar.org>
>cc: whitebox-users@beau.org
>Subject: Re: [WBEL-users] Backups?
>
>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! Geekcode 3.1:GCS C+++ UL++++$ P++ L+++ W++ w--- Y++ b++ 5+++ R tv- e* r 

I use USB 2.0 external drives for backup. This avoids any firewire problems, and 
they are fast enough (25-30 MB/s). Works like a charm, and very cheap: around 
210€ for a 300GB Maxtor.
Compared to tape handling, this is by far the better solution. An issue might be 
long-term storage - but that issue exists for tapes as well.

Kay
-- 
Kay Diederichs   http://strucbio.biologie.uni-konstanz.de/~kay
email: Kay.Diederichs@uni-konstanz.de  Tel +49 7531 88 4049 Fax 3183
Fakultaet fuer Biologie, Universitaet Konstanz, Box M656, D-78457 Konstanz