Your most trusted backup medium?

[mutz]

Assuming I get anything back to backup, I've got to find the right medium for the next round.

What is your favorite, most trusted and easy backup medium, DVD, tape, HD, whatever, and what make of drive?

[Taz]

I backup to a 20/40Gb DLT tape drive, bought relatively cheaply on eBay It's not really big enough to backup everything in one go so I backup the essentials daily and the large dirs weekly.

[mutz]

I had a Colorado some years ago, but somehow that was a drag. Sometimes I finish something and want to throw it on a backup before I forget about it, and I know that if backing up something takes a lot of time or a whole process, I won't do it. Sounds stupid, but I know a lot of people who feel the same way. That's why I thought a big fat HD would be great, but...

[Dr Mordrid]

I use removable HDD's not only to back up OS's (using Ghost) but also to back up video projects.

A HDD will hold a lot more than a tape and last a lot longer sitting on a shelf. They are pretty much impervious to random magnetic fields that would kill a tape and are not near as susceptable to heat. In case of fire HDD's will survive conditions that will melt tape and still be recoverable.

Removable bays can be had for <$30 and drive caddies for $10-15. Some HDD's large enough to do backups, which usually run a few gigs.

The cost of media for a 160g HDD runs $.72 per gig

The cost of media for a 20/40g DLT tape runs $1.80/$.90 per gig.

Dr. Mordrid

[Taz]

Sure using a HD has a lot of advantages but I like to keep several days worth of backups so should I delete something then realise a couple of days later I need it I can stick the relevant tape in and restore the file. The cost of buying say 3 80Gb hard disks would be around £180 whereas I managed to get 5 tapes for £31, again on eBay

[mutz]

Thanks Doc, in a sense that's what I've got now, which I thought was great, til I got THIS.

[mutz]

Dunno Taz. I've worked professoinally for many years with all kinds of tape for recording and archiving, audio, video, data. I've seen so much warped, stretched, sticky, shedding tape AND spent ages trying to recover and remaster stuff. I don't trust it.

I had one project remastering 15,000 audio and 3,000 video tape recordings. All professional tape from the best manufacturers. The best was Agfa, the worst, Scotch. Took 6 years.

I've come to accept that nothing is permanent, so everything is relevant. It comes down to what works best for you. What I've been doing hasn't always worked (like now) for me, so therefore THE QUEST.

[seether]

I've come to accept that nothing is permanent, so everything is relevant. It comes down to what works best for you.

Bingo

Tapes are linear access and don't like heat, (some) optical discs flake out with heat and time, and HDDs don't like power surges or being dropped.

I've always had good luck with scorpion DAT drives, and the tape cost is < 1 dollar/GB

My current system is 2 copies of all permanent data goes on tape and DVD, OS ghosts to tape, and regular (read: whenever I'm not too lazy to make the time) backups to tape. I'm slowly moving away from tapes to firewire HDDs which I just unplug after backups though.

[az]

The safest backup media are MO disks - handle like CD-RW, though drives and media are more expensive, but have AFAIK a lot higher longevity than CD-Rs.

AZ

[VJ]

Euhm, Mutz, perhaps a strange question, but do you mean "backup" or "archiving" ?

When you're talking about your pictures, I think "archiving" is more appropriate. I use cdr's for that (but might be considering a move towards DVD-disks, as a CD cannot hold that much pictures...)


Jörg

[Marshmallowman]

There is back up's and there are backups.

If you run a business and you rely on whats on your computer's , you do offsite backup's...that is you keep at least one copy off site.

I would probably favour HDD's, but if you have a daily backup routine then a weekly full back up and daily incremental backups on a DVD burner/CD-RW would probably be more efficent..

But if its Archive type backups it really depned what your are backing up.

RAW video for editing then HDD's are great because you an actually use the data straight off the drive...

Backups of running systems or databases could be any realible medium you choose, since you are going to have to do a restore to get up and running anyway.

The other aspect to look at is the size of what you are backing up, 100x 1 G backups onto 1 HDD is a bad idea, you would be better off with 100 DVD's/CD's. Whereas a full back of a production database is a pain with something that would take a dozen DVD's.

Having said that, I have backed up 1 CD's worth of my "vital" stuff....and the other 500G, well...I haven't lost it yet

[az]

DVDs aren't as safe as CDs, simply because the pits, land, wobbles etc. are much smaller than on a CD, and the writers aren't as excellent as CD writers yet.

Also, different brands of media have different quality.

For essential stuff that's not too big and needs to be archived for a long time (i.e. no backup you'd throw away next month anyway, because it's old then), I'd really look into MO drives.

AZ

[VJ]

Originally posted by az
DVDs aren't as safe as CDs, simply because the pits, land, wobbles etc. are much smaller than on a CD, and the writers aren't as excellent as CD writers yet.

DVD-RAMs are considered to be much better than DVD+/-RW though... I think even better than CDs... But I'll check up on those MO-disks.


Jörg

[mutz]

Good points everybody.

And VJ hit the nail on the head. Backups intimate having the original plus one or more copies. Archiving means preserving vital data long term. Long term is relative. Spent hours debating this with a VP of MGM. They spend millions on their archives and are still running scared.

The main thing is being disciplined and consistant with it, whatever the medium. This is where I eff up. Think I can wing it indefinitely. I maintain and upgrade the computer better than its contents. I guess because it's more fun driving faster than changing the oil.

What I'm trying to get at here is a practical, cost and time effective means for backup and archiving. The amount of digital data is taking quantum leaps ahead of fast, reliable, practical storage.

I think this thread is interesting and important because we often forget how mortal and vulnerable we and our digital collections are.

I just got a reminder...

[GT98]

This reminds me of the problems that the US Census has....back in the 1980's they stored all their data on WORM drives, and now all that data is lost since their is no longer any working WORM drives or the data was destoryed. Now they are keeping paper back ups and converting the data to a newer medium as they become more popular etc....