Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Tue, 27 Nov 2001 10:16:42 +0100
From:      "Anthony Atkielski" <anthony@freebie.atkielski.com>
To:        "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com>
Cc:        <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject:   Re: SCSI tape back that works under FreeBSD
Message-ID:  <001b01c17724$3c3b6ce0$0a00000a@atkielski.com>
References:  <000101c17714$2abf0ea0$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Ted writes:

> I mainly wanted to emphasize that while DAT is
> fine for light use, it won't stand up to a tape
> cassette's worth of data totally rewritten every
> night for a year.  You have to be a little careful
> when recommending solutions to note the environment
> they work in.

I think my suggestions match the most likely FreeBSD production environments.
Additionally, I'm not convinced that DATs are as fragile as you imply.

> It depends on the drive - on the Exabyte 8mm
> drives it certainly was.  On the others, not so much.

I've had lots of trouble with 8mm drives, but none with 4mm (DAT) drives.  Are
you sure you've had problems with the latter, or are you just grouping both
types of drives together?  As I recall, 4mm drives have a much better reputation
for reliability than 8mm drives, and my own experience on both types of drive is
congruent with that reputation.

> It would suck mightily if you had 3 years of
> backup tape saved up, all hardware compressed, and
> you replaced the tape drive and found all old tapes
> to be unreadable.

I've never heard of anyone restoring three years of backups.  In fact, I'd guess
that about 95% of all file restorations are from the most recent backup, and
virtually nothing ever needs to go back more than two or three days.  Anything
three years old is an archive, not a backup.


To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message




Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?001b01c17724$3c3b6ce0$0a00000a>