Comment Re:Tape Backup? (Score 2, Insightful) 642
Agree on Optical Media. Here is my backup solution - if you don't want to spend the money on the commercial software, roll your own.
I use Dantz Retrospect. I have two completely separate "sets" of backups. Each set gets an incremental update on alternating Fridays. When you start a set, you will get a full backup (in my case 5 DVD+R's). Incremental updates then keep getting written to a disk until the disk is full or you get paranoid and throw it in the safe.
This means that all files including a back-log of revisions are available on two completely different sets of disks. Even if both sets become defective, the software can rescue whatever files it can from the functioning media.
Every 6 months or a year, I close out the set and move them off-site. Their only purpose now is in case an entire newer set fails or in case I want a really old revision.
DVDs live at home in my fire-proof safe, at work, and eventually with a friend or family member elsewhere.
This is extremely convenient and meets the need. Any time I am nervous about the state of the discs I can toss them in and have the entire set tested for integrity.
I get really nervous about people backing up to additional hard drives or even hard drives on other systems. If your fear is simple mechanical failure, then a RAID would have been your answer. You must be anticipating malicious or accidental erasure of your content. Well if the system you store all of this on is vulnerable to these attacks, what makes you think a second drive or even a second system will be immune? Get it on a removeable medium and get it out of electrons' reach.
I use Dantz Retrospect. I have two completely separate "sets" of backups. Each set gets an incremental update on alternating Fridays. When you start a set, you will get a full backup (in my case 5 DVD+R's). Incremental updates then keep getting written to a disk until the disk is full or you get paranoid and throw it in the safe.
This means that all files including a back-log of revisions are available on two completely different sets of disks. Even if both sets become defective, the software can rescue whatever files it can from the functioning media.
Every 6 months or a year, I close out the set and move them off-site. Their only purpose now is in case an entire newer set fails or in case I want a really old revision.
DVDs live at home in my fire-proof safe, at work, and eventually with a friend or family member elsewhere.
This is extremely convenient and meets the need. Any time I am nervous about the state of the discs I can toss them in and have the entire set tested for integrity.
I get really nervous about people backing up to additional hard drives or even hard drives on other systems. If your fear is simple mechanical failure, then a RAID would have been your answer. You must be anticipating malicious or accidental erasure of your content. Well if the system you store all of this on is vulnerable to these attacks, what makes you think a second drive or even a second system will be immune? Get it on a removeable medium and get it out of electrons' reach.
