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Date:      Thu, 12 Sep 2002 10:47:23 +1000
From:      Tony Landells <ahl@austclear.com.au>
To:        "Jack L. Stone" <jackstone@sage-one.net>
Cc:        freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG, ahl@austclear.com.au
Subject:   Re: Backups on IDE disks 
Message-ID:  <200209120047.KAA17629@tungsten.austclear.com.au>
In-Reply-To: Message from "Jack L. Stone" <jackstone@sage-one.net>  of "Wed, 11 Sep 2002 19:26:52 EST." <3.0.5.32.20020911192652.00fbeac8@mail.sage-one.net> 

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jackstone@sage-one.net said:
> I don't see how any of these caveats have anything unique to a HD
> backup. Those extremes could apply to any type of backup. 

Yes they could, though I don't necessarily call them all extremes.
Power spikes can be quite common if you live in an area with a poor
power supply: at one stage I lived in a house that had several blackouts
and a couple of brownouts in the time I was there.

And accidents occur far more frequently than most of us would like,
which is one of the major reasons for having backups in the first
place ;-)

The point is that the hard disk is there, powered up, and "online"
from the time you put it in to the time you take it out.

By contrast, you can arrange for many tape devices to go "offline"
after they've done a backup, at which point they can't be accessed
until they've been "reset" in some fashion.  Since I assume most
people doing tape backup rotate tapes daily (on a weekly cycle, or
using the "Towers of Hanoi" algorithm, or whatever), there's reasonable
protection from both these problems.

Using CD-ROM is similar.  Chances are you change media daily and
then put the backup somewhere safe.  Again, it's "offline" once
the backup's done.

If what you want is to be able to get back old files (or files
accidentally deleted), and you think the chances of disaster,
malice, accident, or power irregularities aren't significant,
then hard disks are an excellent option.

I use backups to hard disk myself in some instances.  I think they're
a good thing.  I'm just advocating that for ANY sort of backup you
should think about what sort of protection you're trying to achieve.

As you so rightly point out, the important thing is to be doing SOME
sort of backup...

Tony
-- 
Tony Landells						<ahl@austclear.com.au>
Principal Networks, Security & IT Systems Engineer	Ph:  +61 3 9677 9319
Australian Clearing Services Pty Ltd			Fax: +61 3 9677 9355
Level 4, Rialto North Tower
525 Collins Street
Melbourne VIC 3000
Australia



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