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 audiophile would consider allowing the heads in their stereo get dusty and dirty. Same 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 read the data from of their tapes. The tapes were created by the Apollo program. Seems 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 wrote: > > 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.) > > The same argumentation applies to disks. > > >>> 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. > > I've used Exabyte and DDS. I've had many problems with each. > > 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 -- Paradigms - you know what they say, "shift happens." -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.12 GCS d- s:+ a C++ UB++ P+ L++ E- W++ N++ o K w O- M-- V PS+ PE Y+ PGP++ t 5++ X- R tv+ b+++ DI++ D++ G e* h-- r- y+ ------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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