On Fri, Mar 31, 2000 at 05:38:27PM +0000, Jeff Hill wrote:
> I know this is off-topic, but since it was brought up ;)
>
> Why not use an old disk, outside of the RAID, for backups? I mount old
> IDE drives for backups only: tarring the entire system to the backup
> drive once a week, changed files daily. Seems to work better for me than
> tapes which always had problems, but maybe I had a poor tape system.
That's a good idea!
> When I've had to re-install the OS on test machines because I bungled
> something, it seems to work well and quickly. But maybe I'm missing
> something?
Yeah, for recovering entire systems, it's not a bad idea. You could
even have a small system on that drive and a boot floppy so you can
boot off of it in a pinch.
I've had very good experience with SCSI AIT and Travan under Linux,
but tape drive systems + tapes are relatively expensive these days.
They are also slow.
HD's are cheap, reliable (well, relative to tapes...I think new HD's
are less reliable than they were...), and fast.
If I had to pick a disadvantage to using an HD for backup, it's that
it isn't portable. E.g., I keep some tapes off-site in a safe place
in case there were a fire or something. That's difficult w/ HD's
unless you are talking multiple hot-swap drives (just get a tape drive
at that point!).
Phil
--
Philip Edelbrock -- IS Manager -- Edge Design, Corvallis, OR
[EMAIL PROTECTED] -- http://www.netroedge.com/~phil
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