From owner-freebsd-questions Sun Oct 10 18:54:41 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from freebie.lemis.com (freebie.lemis.com [192.109.197.137]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1B12E150AB for ; Sun, 10 Oct 1999 18:54:35 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from grog@freebie.lemis.com) Received: (from grog@localhost) by freebie.lemis.com (8.9.3/8.9.0) id LAA23899; Mon, 11 Oct 1999 11:24:17 +0930 (CST) Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 11:24:17 +0930 From: Greg Lehey To: patl@phoenix.volant.org Cc: Arcady Genkin , freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Why use tape for backups? (was: backup method reccommendation?) Message-ID: <19991011112417.S78191@freebie.lemis.com> References: <87iu4etzlp.fsf_-_@main.wgaf.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 1.0pre2i In-Reply-To: WWW-Home-Page: http://www.lemis.com/~grog X-PGP-Fingerprint: 6B 7B C3 8C 61 CD 54 AF 13 24 52 F8 6D A4 95 EF Organization: LEMIS, PO Box 460, Echunga SA 5153, Australia Phone: +61-8-8388-8286 Fax: +61-8-8388-8725 Mobile: +61-41-739-7062 Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Sunday, 10 October 1999 at 18:33:35 -0700, patl@phoenix.volant.org wrote: > On 10-Oct-99 at 18:05, Arcady Genkin (a.genkin@utoronto.ca) wrote: >> This discussion of backups to tape reminded me that I have always >> wondered, why do some people chose tape as backup solution for desktop >> pc's. >> >> It seems to me that it's much cheaper, faster, and more reliable to >> just buy another hard drive and dedicate it for backups. >> >> Is there any reasons tapes are a better choice? > > A second disk gets you only one generation of backup. And if > something catastrophic happens during the backup, it may be > corrupted too leaving you with -no- backup. Well, that can happen with tapes, too. > If you want multiple generations; and/or have many disks or systems > to backup, you can't beat the price per bit or reliability of tape. This used to be the correct answer. I'm no longer sure it is. Certainly I think that the current generation of tape units is *much* less reliable than hard disk. The media are cheaper, but when I consider the number of DDS drives I wore out doing regular daily backups, I think that backing up to disk might have been cheaper. Greg -- When replying to this message, please copy the original recipients. For more information, see http://www.lemis.com/questions.html See complete headers for address, home page and phone numbers finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message