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Date:      Fri, 23 Aug 2002 17:25:47 -0500
From:      David Kelly <dkelly@hiwaay.net>
To:        Bill Moran <wmoran@potentialtech.com>
Cc:        freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: I'm looking for low-cost, 120G backup solution.
Message-ID:  <20020823222547.GB40397@grumpy.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <3D6662D1.6090007@potentialtech.com>
References:  <3D6662D1.6090007@potentialtech.com>

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On Fri, Aug 23, 2002 at 12:29:05PM -0400, Bill Moran wrote:
> Hello all.
> 
> I'm looking for a backup solution that can handle as much
> as 120G (compressed) per tape.
> I was pretty excited about OnStream's systems, except that
> they don't seem to be supported by FreeBSD.  Is anyone out
> there using one of these reliably?

At the prices you mentioned further down the thread, $1000 for the
OnStream drive and $100 per tape one should give serious consideration
to IDE drives as the backup "media".

80G drives are pretty easy to come by for under $100 each. A quick
non-optimal price check suggests 120G for $165 and 160G for $265.
So it boils down to how many archival copies does one require? (10) 120G
tapes + drive is roughly $2000. (10) 120G IDE HD's is roughly $1650.

Add something like an old PII-300 for $100 to $200 to host the backup
HD's. You've said the data doesn't compress, so don't try.

Dell Optiplex PII-300's and thru 450's were falling off 3 year leases
this past year and used to be plentiful at ~$125-ish but I don't see
many now where I was looking. Might want to add a UDMA ATA/IDE card to
that.

HD's are harder to handle than tapes. Have seen inexpensive removable
trays but don't know how well they work.

Rather than handle the HD's one could mount (4) in the backup machine
and simply rotate their use.

At work I have an 80G HD mounted in my MacOS X G4-400 and do nightly
backups of PC's and Macs with Retrospect to this 80G drive. Is not as
nice as an off-site archive but has saved our tail a couple of times.
Much less wear and tear on the HD than my DDS-2 tape drive.

-- 
David Kelly N4HHE, dkelly@hiwaay.net
=====================================================================
The human mind ordinarily operates at only ten percent of its
capacity -- the rest is overhead for the operating system.

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