Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 12:08:55 +0930 From: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> 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> In-Reply-To: <ML-3.4.939608472.9084.patl@asimov> References: <19991011112417.S78191@freebie.lemis.com> <ML-3.4.939608472.9084.patl@asimov>
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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
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