Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 09:04:52 -0700 From: Gunnar H Reichert-Weygold <postmaster@paganlibrary.com> To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Why use tape for backups? (was: backup method reccommendation?) Message-ID: <99101109111101.03429@gunnar.my.domain> In-Reply-To: <19991011120854.U78191@freebie.lemis.com> References: <19991011112417.S78191@freebie.lemis.com> <ML-3.4.939608472.9084.patl@asimov> <19991011120854.U78191@freebie.lemis.com>
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Tape is very reliable, so long as you treat with proper care. No audiophi= le would consider allowing the heads in their stereo get dusty and dirty. Sa= me heads essentially, same care needed. Proper storage of the media is the next headache. NASA recently ran into a little problem. They couldn't find a drive to re= ad the data from of their tapes. The tapes were created by the Apollo program. S= eems the tapes outlasted the dtive technology. You can also ask the Social Security Administration what the majority of = their data is on. The SSA is an exception, though. Their tapes are buried in a = salt mine. Imation/3M still pulls a tape out of the vault every year to check it's integrity. It's a DC6000 that was done in the early seventies. On Sun, 10 Oct 1999, Greg Lehey wrote: > On Sunday, 10 October 1999 at 19:21:12 -0700, patl@phoenix.volant.org w= rote: > > On 10-Oct-99 at 18:54, Greg Lehey (grog@lemis.com) wrote: > >>> 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. > > > > Yes, if you are foolish enough to reuse a single backup tape instead > > of at least switching back and forth between two. (Or, better yet, > > having a real backup cycle among multiple tapes.) >=20 > The same argumentation applies to disks. >=20 > >>> 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. > > > > Maybe DDS wasn't the right choice. I've been using Exabyte 8mm > > backups for years, both personally and at various companies; and > > I've had more problems with disk drives going bad than I have with > > tape drives. >=20 > I've used Exabyte and DDS. I've had many problems with each. >=20 > 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 >=20 >=20 > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message --=20 Paradigms - you know what they say, "shift happens." -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----=20 Version: 3.12=20 GCS d- s:+ a C++ UB++ P+ L++ E- W++ N++ o K w=20 O- M-- V PS+ PE Y+ PGP++ t 5++ X- R tv+ b+++ DI++ D++=20 G e* h-- r- y+=20 ------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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