^^ Beware, that is not reliable for backups.
BTW this reminded me i have to backup.

Hi newbiesforever.

I wrote a script using rsync for this situation. I have been using it for months and it works very well. You can download it from rsync2u. Instructions are at the top of the file.

I use CD/DVD and k3b and md5 to make sure everything is ok after CD/DVD finish.
keep things simple.

How much data can tapes hold before they get too cumbersome/time consuming? What if I want to back up 2 or 3 hundred gigabytes of data, say, once a week? What sort of routine would that take and what would the ballpark cost of setting it up be, do you think?

For the record, I do backups (snapshots) locally across machines, and also across the internet to remote stores using rsync via ssh.

Personally, I consider any data being stored on a HDD as volatile, the HDD could fail at any time, sometimes without any warning even from SMART. Now, the chances of two HDDs failing at the same time is low, but not if they were bought at the same time, and sometimes miracles happen and many HDDs all fail at once.

The largest tape drives currently are a terabyte, from IBM's TS1130. Drives are in the thousands of dollars, tapes are about 30-40 dollars. So you'd have to be doing quite a lot of backing up before the tape offers a price advantage over hard drives, though of course there are other factors to consider.

Yeah, I think tape drives are a lot better than using HDDs, especially for server backups. I don't think HDDs should ever be considered for specifically backing up data, neither flash drives, nor floppy disks (some of my teachers still use these for backups).

Floppy disks?? They must have very small amounts of data to back up.

A terabyte is useful. How long does it take to write that? (Or what is the transfer rate?) Thousands of dollars is not so much nowadays. But I think we are getting into the semantics between 'backups' and 'archives' now.

There needs to be more to the equation such as cost and location. Most backup is done and stored at the same location as the equipment. What happens in a major disaster as hurricane, explosion, etc? To be good I think the backup should be done in triplicate in different locations on identical machines - that is if cost is no object but then comes the security issue.

Major disaster ? Hmm, store the tapes in a tough safe...

I work for a business that owns a bank vault. (I may have already mentioned this...) Seriously. We rent a building that used to be a bank, the vault's still there, massive steel door and all. Locks are gone, but I figure it'll be fireproof at least.

That would be a good place to keep backups. But...we're not even taking any :-( I haven't even been able to convince people to use the fileservers instead of storing stuff on desktops or (worse) unencrypted USB sticks. The only person who uses the server seems to be me. Since the beginning of February I've been asked to do data recovery four times *sigh*.

I have found the INTERNET the most reliable backup....
I still have files from 13 years ago which were uploaded onto excite,
The hardest thing is remembering which laptop has which data most up to date
but since using LINUX this whole process has become so easy.

Graham

.........

Does that cost money? I assume so. I understand Carbonite costs only $50/year, but that would still cost much more than backing up myself and would take my backed-up data out of my control.

I was just trying to back up to a CD, but I found that the data I want to back up and store away from the computer is too large for one disc--about 1.1 GB. (It wasn't always so large, but I have more pictures these days.) Obviously, I could just use two CDs, but I would like to fit it all onto one piece of media. Should I use a DVD, then? I don't have a DVD drive or any blank DVDs, but I think a family member's computer has a DVD drive that I can borrow. If I hadn't been told here that flash drives can fail at any time without warning, I'd prefer them, because they look less shiny and attention-catching (to a thief) than an optical disk.