Date: Tue, 07 Dec 1999 13:38:39 +1100 From: Harry Woodward-Clarke <Harry.Woodward-Clarke@S1.com> To: cjclark@home.com Cc: Dutch Collins <dutch@charm.net>, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Using CD as Backup Dev Message-ID: <384C732F.D12FCAE9@S1.com> References: <199912070218.VAA52638@cc942873-a.ewndsr1.nj.home.com>
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Whoa there! > > Dutch Collins wrote, > > I have been thinking of using a CD for backups. I figure a 18gig SCSI > > drive and a SCSI CD make a perfect couple. So, is this practicable? > > An 18 GB drive can fill about 28 CDs. If you have a 8x burner, that's > still well over 4 hours to write. Does your CDROM have an automated > 28+ CD changer? That's a long time to sit around swapping CDs. Now, > do you think that is "practicable?" > -- You need to consider, you can use gzip to compress the tar file, so that can "roughly" halve the backup size. (9Gb) Not too many will run a disk at 100% (rule of thumb for me is "80% is 'full'"). That takes us down to 7Gb compressed :') One would expect that not all of the data is "user" data, so let's allow a generous 2 Gb for non-changing system type data (e.g. BSD itself, NetNav, StarOffice or whatever and a bunch of other applications that can be easily recovered from CD). 5Gb or so is still a lot to burn to a CD. About 9 or 10 CDs. (Here is Oz I can get a box of 10 CD media for $18.50 - well, that was the price last week, the week before it was $22.) How much has changed since the last backup? Perhaps adopt a cycle of "full-backup" each Sunday afternoon (while watching the idiot-box), and then incremental each evening during the week. One would expect changes since the previous incremental to be less than a CDs worth - especially if it were compressed :') With all of this, you could "pretend" you were an 'operator' in the 'bad-old-days' when all they had to do of an evening was feed tapes into tape drives for backups :') So, maybe you could get by with 2 hours on a Sunday afternoon feeding in 9 or 10 CDs, and 20 minutes each evening. Even if you reduce the 2 hour stint to once a month, and backup once a week, the fact remains that even that backup-policy is better than the one most others adopt (none at all). For ease and simplicity, you still can't beat a big tape-drive, or a smaller one with a tape-caddy :') Now, a writable DVD looks promising ;') haxxa To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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