[rescue] Tape Backup

[Mike Meredith]

On Tuesday 17 September 2002 8:44 am, Stephen D. B. Wolthusen wrote:
> > If I was backing up my systems with DDS tapes, I'd take a full
> > backup every night. Also check the backups at random intervals and
> > destroy any tapes that had failed.
>
> Depending on the volume of the data to be backed up, that may not be
> an option with a DDS-2; these are rather slow.

Sometimes you just have to do it anyway, although it recalls painful 
memories of trying to backup a 10Gbyte server onto 2Gbyte tapes.

> > We use DLTs at work, and the tapes seem to fail less frequently
> > than DDS.
>
> this planet that will read your tapes. Which is a Bad Thing since
> drives conk out occasionally.

Make that regularly ... we used to have DDS tape drives replaced about 
2-3 times every 6 months.

> DLTs (or SDLTs) are fine for critical backups, but both drives and
> tapes are hideously expensive - you get what you pay for. They're

They're certainly expensive new, but 2nd hand is quite a bit cheaper 
especially the 20/40Gbyte models and smaller ... many places are 
replacing these with higher capacity drives. There's a brand new 
Benchmark DLT drive going on ebay.co.uk right now for 550UKP, and 
there's a bunch of older DLTs with bids less than 100UKP.

> If it wasn't for the fact that its a single-vendor solution,
> OnStream's ADR would look good. 

Of course, it wasn't so long ago that DLT was a single vendor solution.