Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2007 15:27:08 +0000 (UTC) From: johnl@iecc.com (John L) To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: backup solution for home FreeBSD server Message-ID: <ev5osc$2oe2$1@gal.iecc.com> References: <20070406002614.75448.qmail@simone.iecc.com> <4615ECC6.3060801@u.washington.edu>
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>> Get a couple of 150G USB disks. They work great, you can use >> dump/restore or just pax -r -w to copy stuff to the disks. >Have you also considered tape backup as well as standard disks? I used to use DLT tapes, and I looked at AIT before I decided on disks. The disks have a couple of advantages that would be hard to match with tape. One is that the backups are completely unattended; I have two USB drives plugged in at a time, and some little scripts wake up each night, figure out which disk has the least recent backups, delete enough old stuff to make room for a new backup, and then use pax -r -w to make the backup from each of the computers on my LAN. The only manual work I need to do is to swap a drive with the one in my safe deposit box once a week. Also, since they're disks, getting files back from a backup is a snap, just cp them from the most recent backup copy. The three disks together cost under $500, and if I need more backup space, I can just buy some more larger ones. To get approximately the same unattended backups I have with my USB disks I would need an AIT jukebox for about $4000. Getting files back would be much more painful, since I would have to spin through an entire dump or cpio image to find a file. Tapes make sense if you have a vast amount of data, multiple terabytes. You need a lot of terabytes before the cheaper media makes up for the much more expensive drives, and it's still nowhere near as convenient as disks. R's, John
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