From owner-freebsd-questions Sun Oct 10 19:39: 8 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from freebie.lemis.com (freebie.lemis.com [192.109.197.137]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4E5E514EB5 for ; Sun, 10 Oct 1999 19:39:03 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from grog@freebie.lemis.com) Received: (from grog@localhost) by freebie.lemis.com (8.9.3/8.9.0) id MAA24149; Mon, 11 Oct 1999 12:08:55 +0930 (CST) Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 12:08:55 +0930 From: Greg Lehey To: patl@phoenix.volant.org Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Why use tape for backups? (was: backup method reccommendation?) Message-ID: <19991011120854.U78191@freebie.lemis.com> References: <19991011112417.S78191@freebie.lemis.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 1.0pre2i In-Reply-To: WWW-Home-Page: http://www.lemis.com/~grog X-PGP-Fingerprint: 6B 7B C3 8C 61 CD 54 AF 13 24 52 F8 6D A4 95 EF Organization: LEMIS, PO Box 460, Echunga SA 5153, Australia Phone: +61-8-8388-8286 Fax: +61-8-8388-8725 Mobile: +61-41-739-7062 Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Sunday, 10 October 1999 at 19:21:12 -0700, patl@phoenix.volant.org wrote: > On 10-Oct-99 at 18:54, Greg Lehey (grog@lemis.com) wrote: >>> A second disk gets you only one generation of backup. And if >>> something catastrophic happens during the backup, it may be >>> corrupted too leaving you with -no- backup. >> >> Well, that can happen with tapes, too. > > Yes, if you are foolish enough to reuse a single backup tape instead > of at least switching back and forth between two. (Or, better yet, > having a real backup cycle among multiple tapes.) The same argumentation applies to disks. >>> If you want multiple generations; and/or have many disks or systems >>> to backup, you can't beat the price per bit or reliability of tape. >> >> This used to be the correct answer. I'm no longer sure it is. >> Certainly I think that the current generation of tape units is *much* >> less reliable than hard disk. The media are cheaper, but when I >> consider the number of DDS drives I wore out doing regular daily >> backups, I think that backing up to disk might have been cheaper. > > Maybe DDS wasn't the right choice. I've been using Exabyte 8mm > backups for years, both personally and at various companies; and > I've had more problems with disk drives going bad than I have with > tape drives. I've used Exabyte and DDS. I've had many problems with each. Greg -- When replying to this message, please copy the original recipients. For more information, see http://www.lemis.com/questions.html See complete headers for address, home page and phone numbers finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message