I am running a server using Mandrake 9 and I am having no luck whatsoever trying to find information about compatible tape backup drives. Can anyone suggest a good tape drive to purchase for this system? I would greatly appreaciate it. Also, what would be a good program to use to do the backups? I am looking to spend as little money as possible as this is for a not for profit organization.

Thanks,
David

Much will depend on:

How much you have to backup?

How long of a backup window do you have? (i.e., do you need a really fast drive or will a slower -- and cheaper -- one do?)

Does this have to run unattended (i.e., if your media has a low capacity, will there be anyone who can change tapes in the middle of the backup session)?

Tapes drives can run anywhere from a few hundred dollars (US$) to several thousand.

How much of a budget will you have for media? DDS cartridges run maybe US$10/ea in small quantities (last time I looked anyway) to over US$100/ea for SDLT cartridges. Dunno about AIT.

Software can run in the same range as the tape drive (or a lot more if you go with a commercial package that insists on you buying a support contract).

There are some open source project working on backup software (see freshmeat.net and search for backup. Of course, there's tar and cpio (which the projects you find on freshmeat may very well be using in the background).

rnturn,

Well, the data that I need backed up will, at this point, be no more than 20-40 GB (If I back up the whole drive regularly). As far as cost goes I need to stay in the hundreds of $$ range so slower drives will have to do. If you can suggest a specific one that will be easy to get ahold of and will work well with Drake 9 I would appreciate it.

Thanks again,
David

I looked around at a couple of sites and it looks like your starting point for something that'll hold 20-40BG on a single cartridge is around US$800. The DLT (incl. SDLT) and 8mm drives are probably out of you price range. The DDS drives look like they'd do the trick. There are a couple of technologies that I'm not all that familiar with -- AIT, LTO, and something called VXA (which appear to be available from a single vendor only... scary) -- that you'd have to research to see if they fit the bill.

Take a look at Dirt Cheap Drives and go the Tape Drives page. You'll find a lot there.

Also, note that most of these are using a SCSI onterface which means you'd have to by a SCSI bus adapter which will run around US$170 for a bare U160 card and you might need a cable (unknown cost, depends on the type you need). I wouldn't waste money on the kits; they typically include a bunch of Windows-only software which you won't ever need unless you're dual booting this system.

Another option you could consider is removable IDE hard disks. I believe some of these can be hot-swapped now. IDE disks are so darned cheap nowadays that you could get a removable drive bay and a couple of hard disks that you could mount, backup to, remove, and put is a safe place. I've heard of people that have done this for booting multiple OSs. It might work as a backup solution as well.

Good luck,

Rick

Thanks for your help Rick!

Dave