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Techie Rant, sorry, couldn't be helped. More

Techie Rant, sorry, couldn't be helped.

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  • What do you suggest instead? I use a combination of HDDs and CD-RWs. HDDs mirror my filesystem under a certain set of circumstances, and CD-RWs save critical files (or directories) which I specify.

    I've found that the HDD method, on a seperate machine, is more effective, and flexible. Because the media is active.
    • Well, yes, but you have TWO kinds of media. A hard drive backup that you can easily get to, and then a removable media backup. Relying solely on a hard drive backup is just stupid, though.

      FWIW, at work, I have a two-tiered backup system as well. I backup a 300GB Raid Array to LTOs and I keep incremental tar backups made via a shell script off on a separate server. This gives me the flexibility of pulling of a file that got deleted accidentally really quick, and the ability to recover from total disaste
      • mmmmm....

        removable media backup... 300GB Raid Array... LTOs... tar mirror...

        Geek talk is soooo sexy!

        :-)

        ....Bethanie....
      • 300GB Raid Array to LTOs

        We're using DLT at the moment (two tiered -- we have disk backups as well), and I'm just hoping we never have to restore from them. With the volume of data we have, it's getting impractical (the last restore we did was around 180GB, and we're up to 300ish now). Tapes are so sloooow! Things may have to change soon, though, and we'll have to look beyond DLT/LTO (which are deemed "mid range" storage) and up to the high end stuff. We've just bought another company, and so overnight[1]

        • Yeah...that's where you start getting into Network Attached Storage and a tape library "jukebox" system.

          My boss gets freaked out when I mention the possiblity of us moving to that one day and remembers the day when HE was the sysadmin and tape 140/180 failed or something and the whole backup was toast. I don't think tape failure in NAS systems these days is QUITE that bad, but he doesn't want to hear it. The guy's a bit loopy if you ask me... ;)

  • see... (Score:2)

    by Servo ( 9177 )
    you wouldn't have to bitch about that stuff if you worked for us [slashdot.org], but I guess you already knew that. :)

    As for my favorite removable media.. I really like our STK 9940B drives. Blazingly fast, and I can stuff about 500Gb on 9940 tape.
    • We're using 100/200GB LTO drives. They suck because to backup a 300GB RAID array you need two tapes if the things more than half full. Where do you get these STK 9940B drives?
      • http://www.storagetek.com/prodserv/products/tape/t 9940b/

        We are using them in a library. I think the 9940b's are only designed for library operation, not standalone.
      • We're using 100/200GB LTO drives. They suck because to backup a 300GB RAID array you need two tapes if the things more than half full. Where do you get these STK 9940B drives?

        That's why you use a library and decent backup software.

        Based on on your current use of LTO you should probably look into one of the 7 slot libraries. They don't cost much more than a single LTO drive.

        The last place I worked we had just put into production a LTO backup solution using one monster (200 tape) library and a 7 slot libr
  • Why is solid-state media so expensive? People should work on it to make it cheaper, faster and more available! We need to get rid of HDs! Move your ass, geeks!

    (Although I'm kinda satisfied with the current state of HDs. They can be huge and and they don't make thrashing noise like they used to)
  • ... that the vast majority of Slashbots "sysadmin" anything bigger than a PC in their bedrooms, did you? Or that they have any "data" to backup that isn't MP3s and pr0n?

    Slashdot really needs to shed the pretensions of being a site for technical people, or at least for technical discussions - it can barely manage to cover "geek culture" without getting lost in the details. I think it could manage the LiveJournal business model, just about.
    • Back when I started, most people were on Slashdot were a bit more technically proficient, yes. ;)

      You have a lower UID than I do, so you know what I'm talking about.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Oh, no doubt. But if the Slashbots can't even get the concept that a hard drive is no good as your only backup, telling them that they need to be offsite is just going to confuse them more. ;)

      Admittedly, the close we get to where I work to offsite backups is carrying tapes to the building across the street, but hey, it's better than nothing.

      • Admittedly, the close we get to where I work to offsite backups is carrying tapes to the building across the street, but hey, it's better than nothing

        At my last employer we had Iron Mountan come by once a week to pick up the weekly offsites. We also sent a set to our East Coast office.
  • I have a bunch of 1394 drives and I run backup exec against my servers from a separate machine.

    Every Monday I pull the 1394 drive from that seperate machine and take it offsite. Then I pop another 1394 drive in place.

    Am I being a moron?

    • I dunno. Are these hard drives, or are they solid state devices or what?

      The main problem, as I stated, is that hard drives don't separate the media from the reader. In a HD if the reader part fails, the media tends to become useless which makes recovery impossible.

      If the reader part of a tape drive fails, the *tape* is still good provided you can get a drive. Follow me?
  • I didn't bother to read any of the parents, but the article submitter asked about his movie and music files (iow, pr0n collection). For that, a hard drive backup is just fine. There's no reason to spend the money on a tape drive for home use.

    But you are right that some of these dipshits might be backing up their company's info to hard drives.

    At home, I have no backups. Stupid, but I'm pretty cheap:) My photos are one the website as well, and the mp3's are the backups for my CDs. My windows box has one of
    • Okay, you're right...the guy was talking about his personal pr0n collection most likely, but that's the problem with the Slashbot groupthink. Some of 'em will see that and think its okay if you're using it to backup your company's info, or even if you have *critical* data on your home box (for instance, I'm involved as a semi-silent partner in one business that does architectural services, and am actively in another company that develops custom and customized hardware and software solutions...some of this
  • While I have a feeling that the poster's you're whining about are not using the drives as an off-site backup, but at least 2 of them (I read them before lunch, so forgive me) say *external* drives. This counts as a good backup, provided that the drives are removed from the machine, and preferably off site.

    Good backups are ones that you can get to if something goes wrong, no matter what the media. A copy of a file that is both on a server across town and is on the local machine counts as a backup. Even b
    • Even a removable drive is a problem. (When I say removable drive, I mean a removable hard drive, not a ZIP disk or something like that which is a removable media hard drive -- big difference) The problem is if you *drop* the removable drive from a high enough distance onto a concrete floor (and 3 feet is a high enough distance), then the drive is usually totally toast. OTOH, If I drop a tape from 3 feet, the tape is usually fine.

      Furthermore, hard drives are mechanical devices. If the read/write heads fai
      • 10 years! That's data archiving, not backup im my book. Different discussion. Backups are for if the shit hits the fan. Archiving is for stuff you'll forget about until you're audited, so you hant to hold on to it forever.

        Backup is about relatatively short term reliability of the media. Archive is about long term reliability.
        • Ehhh...but not the rest of my post. How many times can you write to a hard drive before it fails? That depends on the MBTF. The MBTF for a tape is a lot longer than the MBTF for a hard drive. And the problem with a failing hard drive is that you don't always know that it's failing either because hard drives can fail in subtle ways and you might not know it until it's too late. :)

          Also, hard drives don't lend themselves well to incremental or differential backup strategies, unless you've got a gazillion d
    • At my last company we were pushing nearly a terabyte of data online. There was no cost effective way to mirror this to multiple locations.

      While we had a live mirror of our main fileserver and database servers in a co-lo across town that still wasn't enough for either archival, backup, or protecting against stupid luser stunts. For that we had 2 LTO libraries. One to backup everything and one we used as a spare and to grab a second copy of just the source repository and build archives.

      I tend to trust tape
  • Drives aren't a viable option for backup? http://www.computerworld.com/securitytopics/securi ty/recovery/story/0,10801,84579,00.html

    It was on the Front Page, so you'll remember it. Mid way down, see what was recoverable from the disaster.

    I'm not saying drives are the best solution, but they should not be dismissed out of hand.

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