Re: [Bacula-users] DVD+RW vs DVD-RAM for incremental daily backups
Georg wrote: --On Montag, 29. Januar 2007 18:07 +0100 Cosimo Streppone [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Using DVD-RAM in combination with bacula is on my projects list. Is anybody actually doing this? [...] I'm in the first stage of try-and-see-what-happens and I configured DVD-RAM device exactly like a usb removable drive, with its mount point `/mnt/dvdrecorder'. Actually I would rather like to use DVD-RAM as a raw device. Just the way normal DVD-writing works. What's the point of having a filesystem with one file on it? ;-) I usually also store some photos, system configs, cvs repository, ... on the same disk. I found the DVD-RAM media to be somewhat slow when writing full directory subtrees, but writing to a file like bacula does works smoothly... This depends very much on the filesystem you use. Most filesystems store file meta-data in fixed places. Therefore the drive has to seek across the disc to update the meta-data when writing new files (or when making changes to the fs in general). This leads to bad performance and also makes the medium wear out faster at these sectors. Good point, thanks. I'll try reformatting the disc with udf. -- Cosimo - Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT business topics through brief surveys - and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.phpp=sourceforgeCID=DEVDEV ___ Bacula-users mailing list Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users
Re: [Bacula-users] DVD+RW vs DVD-RAM for incremental daily backups
--On Montag, 29. Januar 2007 18:07 +0100 Cosimo Streppone [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Using DVD-RAM in combination with bacula is on my projects list. Is anybody actually doing this? Yes, I am doing this on my home Linux workstation. I use a Samsung GSA-2164D dvdrecorder with a plain (no cartridge) DVD-RAM disk. I'm in the first stage of try-and-see-what-happens and I configured DVD-RAM device exactly like a usb removable drive, with its mount point `/mnt/dvdrecorder'. I should only make sure that disc is already mounted when I start the bacula job. But that is easily solvable with a RunBeforeJob directive (or it should be). Actually I would rather like to use DVD-RAM as a raw device. Just the way normal DVD-writing works. What's the point of having a filesystem with one file on it? ;-) Thanks for your post, though. I have not yet explored how to use raw block devices with bacula (tape only). DVD-RAM are random access. So, can I simply use Archive Device = /dev/mydvdram and Device type = file? I guess I just have to try it out. I'll let you know how it goes. I found the DVD-RAM media to be somewhat slow when writing full directory subtrees, but writing to a file like bacula does works smoothly... This depends very much on the filesystem you use. Most filesystems store file meta-data in fixed places. Therefore the drive has to seek across the disc to update the meta-data when writing new files (or when making changes to the fs in general). This leads to bad performance and also makes the medium wear out faster at these sectors. Though I am wondering if the latter one is an issue with DVD-RAMs at all, because of automatic relocation of bad sectors and verification. If somebody has a deeper insight into this, I would be pleased to be enlightened. UDF was designed for use with (re-)writable optical media. It writes to the disc in a sequential manner. There is no need for the drive to seek across the disc and therefore you get better performance. AFAIK linux now has good support for UDF, so maybe you want to give it a try. Sadly, FreeBSD still only has read support. :-((( Regards, Georg - Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT business topics through brief surveys - and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.phpp=sourceforgeCID=DEVDEV ___ Bacula-users mailing list Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users
Re: [Bacula-users] DVD+RW vs DVD-RAM for incremental daily backups
On Fri, 26 Jan 2007, cy tune wrote: It's about $8 per disk for a Verbatim double sided DVD-RAM disk (9.4 GB) in a cartridge. Going the tape route would cost far, far more wouldn't it? It's about $30 for a 200Gb (native) LTO2 tape. Tapes are well-tested for longevity (EXCEPT DATS!) My experience with old CDRs is about a 2% failure rate on 2 year old discs. DVDs are too new to have any usable data. Yes a decent tape drive is more expensive than a DVD drive. - Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT business topics through brief surveys - and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.phpp=sourceforgeCID=DEVDEV ___ Bacula-users mailing list Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users
Re: [Bacula-users] DVD+RW vs DVD-RAM for incremental daily backups
Using DVD-RAM in combination with bacula is on my projects list. Is anybody actually doing this? Yes, I am doing this on my home Linux workstation. I use a Samsung GSA-2164D dvdrecorder with a plain (no cartridge) DVD-RAM disk. I'm in the first stage of try-and-see-what-happens and I configured DVD-RAM device exactly like a usb removable drive, with its mount point `/mnt/dvdrecorder'. I should only make sure that disc is already mounted when I start the bacula job. But that is easily solvable with a RunBeforeJob directive (or it should be). I found the DVD-RAM media to be somewhat slow when writing full directory subtrees, but writing to a file like bacula does works smoothly... -- Cosimo - Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT business topics through brief surveys - and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.phpp=sourceforgeCID=DEVDEV ___ Bacula-users mailing list Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users
Re: [Bacula-users] DVD+RW vs DVD-RAM for incremental daily backups
--On Freitag, 26. Januar 2007 20:27 -0500 cy tune [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 1/26/07, Arno Lehmann [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hello. Hi On 1/27/2007 12:23 AM, cy tune wrote: Will DVD+R, DVD+RW, and DVD-RAM all work fine when I need multiple disks for each task? If a weekly backup needs 3 disks, will that be okay? Similarly for the other tasks. You mean, if you can mix the three media types? No. You can mix DVD+R and +RW but DVD-RAM is treated differently. If I remember correctly, growisofs happily writes to a dvd-ram, as long as your drive supports it. Please correct me if I'm wrong. I didn't phrase it properly. I meant can I backup to several disks of the same type for one task? If my daily backup takes 2 DVD+R disks, is that okay? I'm not familiar with bacula dvd-writing... I leave this question for the bacula-dvd-versed to answer. :-) Is there any different setup you would recommend? I looked into tape drives but they are so expensive for the tapes and drives. The have much higher capacity, are more reliable, and more robust... I I'm not sure I would use the capacity though. It's about $8 per disk for a Verbatim double sided DVD-RAM disk (9.4 GB) in a cartridge. Going the tape route would cost far, far more wouldn't it? For small amounts of data (say a few GB) I would say this is true. DVD devices are cheap. Though nothing beats tape media comparing price/GB, still... prefer tape or, if offsite storage and the ability to endlessly add storage count less than speed (and price) disk. I'm not concerned about speed of a tape vs DVD. I am price conscious at this point though. My old (unfortunate) method was a full backup every 6 months with no incremental backups. I'm now looking at using bacula for daily backups and weekly/monthly full backups. I had a tape drive on an older computer and never used it. It's capacity is so small compared to today's hard drives. It seems to me that by the time I would want to replace DVD-RAM disks, I would be ready to upgrade my tape drive to support larger capacity tapes. By the time I'm ready to replace the DVD-RAM disks, I could be buying blu-ray or hd-dvd or whatever is sufficiently cheap at the time. Let me know if any of this is wrong. :) I like the bacula manual as far as setting everything up. It looks clear how all the parts integrated and how to write a config file for each part. What's not clear is what backup media to choose and what kind of backup strategies people use. with the hardware verification? I'm not sure how to turn that on/off in Linux since it's just treated as a hard drive. According to the wikipedia entry, it will take about twice as long to write. Right, it takes longer and it's always on. This is not something you can turn on or off, AFAIK. The built-in verification makes DVD-RAM the most reliable medium in the DVD-zoo. Though it is also the slowest. I have seen far too many unreadable DVD+RW discs. I wouldn't recommend these for backups. Double-sided DVD-RAMs are also problematic. You cannot physically label them and its difficult to handle them without making fingerprints. Either use a drive that handles caddies or use single-sided discs. The former option is of course the safest. I'm using a LG DVD-RAM drive with single-sided DVD-RAMs on my private computer (Windows) for archiving data (not bacula). Using UDF seemed the best option and I'm quite happy with it. No bad discs so far. Using DVD-RAM in combination with bacula is on my projects list. Is anybody actually doing this? Regards, Georg - Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT business topics through brief surveys - and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.phpp=sourceforgeCID=DEVDEV ___ Bacula-users mailing list Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users
Re: [Bacula-users] DVD+RW vs DVD-RAM for incremental daily backups
Hello. On 1/27/2007 12:23 AM, cy tune wrote: I have a question about DVD+RW vs. DVD-RAM. I read through the archives but I didn't see anything comparing DVD+RW vs DVD-RAM. Here's my plan: a) DVD+RW or DVD-RAM for incremental daily backups. I am planning on at least 7 disks so I can extend the lifetime of the media. DVD-RAM would last longer and I like the hardware verification. b) DVD+R for archiving weekly and full backups. Probably dual layer for full backups and single layer for weekly. I don't think I'll generate much more data than that. One byte more than what you can put onto a disk is enough :-) Will DVD+R, DVD+RW, and DVD-RAM all work fine when I need multiple disks for each task? If a weekly backup needs 3 disks, will that be okay? Similarly for the other tasks. You mean, if you can mix the three media types? No. You can mix DVD+R and +RW but DVD-RAM is treated differently. Is there any different setup you would recommend? I looked into tape drives but they are so expensive for the tapes and drives. The have much higher capacity, are more reliable, and more robust... I prefer tape or, if offsite storage and the ability to endlessly add storage count less than speed (and price) disk. Right now I'm leaning towards DVD+RW and DVD+R because I know it's supported according to the bacula manual. Yes, it should work, but I must admit I haven't tried it seriously since the first 1.39 versions. Has anyone used DVD-RAM DVD-RAM should usually be used just like a removable disk, i.e. insert disk, create filesystem, use, unmount. This is quite different to what Bacula does with DVDs. with the hardware verification? I'm not sure how to turn that on/off in Linux since it's just treated as a hard drive. According to the wikipedia entry, it will take about twice as long to write. Right, it takes longer and it's always on. This is not something you can turn on or off, AFAIK. I'm only concerned with backing up a single system (linux 2.6.18) but will soon be interested in at least 1 more. Thanks. - Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT business topics through brief surveys - and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.phpp=sourceforgeCID=DEVDEV ___ Bacula-users mailing list Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users -- IT-Service Lehmann[EMAIL PROTECTED] Arno Lehmann http://www.its-lehmann.de - Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT business topics through brief surveys - and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.phpp=sourceforgeCID=DEVDEV ___ Bacula-users mailing list Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users
Re: [Bacula-users] DVD+RW vs DVD-RAM for incremental daily backups
On 1/26/07, Arno Lehmann [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hello. Hi On 1/27/2007 12:23 AM, cy tune wrote: Will DVD+R, DVD+RW, and DVD-RAM all work fine when I need multiple disks for each task? If a weekly backup needs 3 disks, will that be okay? Similarly for the other tasks. You mean, if you can mix the three media types? No. You can mix DVD+R and +RW but DVD-RAM is treated differently. I didn't phrase it properly. I meant can I backup to several disks of the same type for one task? If my daily backup takes 2 DVD+R disks, is that okay? Is there any different setup you would recommend? I looked into tape drives but they are so expensive for the tapes and drives. The have much higher capacity, are more reliable, and more robust... I I'm not sure I would use the capacity though. It's about $8 per disk for a Verbatim double sided DVD-RAM disk (9.4 GB) in a cartridge. Going the tape route would cost far, far more wouldn't it? prefer tape or, if offsite storage and the ability to endlessly add storage count less than speed (and price) disk. I'm not concerned about speed of a tape vs DVD. I am price conscious at this point though. My old (unfortunate) method was a full backup every 6 months with no incremental backups. I'm now looking at using bacula for daily backups and weekly/monthly full backups. I had a tape drive on an older computer and never used it. It's capacity is so small compared to today's hard drives. It seems to me that by the time I would want to replace DVD-RAM disks, I would be ready to upgrade my tape drive to support larger capacity tapes. By the time I'm ready to replace the DVD-RAM disks, I could be buying blu-ray or hd-dvd or whatever is sufficiently cheap at the time. Let me know if any of this is wrong. :) I like the bacula manual as far as setting everything up. It looks clear how all the parts integrated and how to write a config file for each part. What's not clear is what backup media to choose and what kind of backup strategies people use. with the hardware verification? I'm not sure how to turn that on/off in Linux since it's just treated as a hard drive. According to the wikipedia entry, it will take about twice as long to write. Right, it takes longer and it's always on. This is not something you can turn on or off, AFAIK. Oh okay thanks. - Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT business topics through brief surveys - and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.phpp=sourceforgeCID=DEVDEV ___ Bacula-users mailing list Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users
