Best Backup for 30GB of Data?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jeremy
  • Start date Start date
J

Jeremy

Hello. I'm looking into different types of backup to help protect myself
from data loss caused by virus infections.

What would you all recommend as the best way to backup about 30 gigs of
data? Are there external Iomega drives that can handle that size? Would a
spare hard drive be better? Thank you.

Jeremy
 
Hello. I'm looking into different types of backup to help protect myself
from data loss caused by virus infections.

What would you all recommend as the best way to backup about 30 gigs of
data? Are there external Iomega drives that can handle that size? Would a
spare hard drive be better? Thank you.
Click to expand...

For that amount of data I'd suggest either a Network Attached Storage or
an external DAT (tape) drive. Iomega has some decent reasonably priced
NAS gear and Certance <http://www.certance.com> has some reasonably
priced DAT drives.

--
Cheers-

Jeff Setaro
(e-mail address removed)
http://people.mags.net/jasetaro/
PGP Key IDs DH/DSS: 0x5D41429D RSA: 0x599D2A99 New RSA: 0xA19EBD34
 
Hello. I'm looking into different types of backup to help protect
myself from data loss caused by virus infections.

What would you all recommend as the best way to backup about 30 gigs of
data? Are there external Iomega drives that can handle that size? Would
a spare hard drive be better? Thank you.

Jeremy
Click to expand...

To see what Iomega offers, check their web site: www.iomega.com

If you want to protect data in case of virus infection, then the backup
has to meet the following characteristics:

It is isolated from the system except during backup.

It can keep versions of your data (just in case the most recent version
is affected, and you backed it up, without realizing that it was
affected).

You might want to consider a tape backup system.

But if your 30 GB of data is mostly non-volatile (doesn't change often),
maybe all you need to do is to back everything up onto DVD/CD's, and then
back up changed files onto a CD.
 
I would suggest a USB v2.0 AIT Tape drive.

It has higer capacity than DAT and is much faster.

LaCie makes a good drive.

Dave

| For that amount of data I'd suggest either a Network Attached Storage or
| an external DAT (tape) drive. Iomega has some decent reasonably priced
| NAS gear and Certance <http://www.certance.com> has some reasonably
| priced DAT drives.
|
| --
| Cheers-
|
| Jeff Setaro
| (e-mail address removed)
| http://people.mags.net/jasetaro/
| PGP Key IDs DH/DSS: 0x5D41429D RSA: 0x599D2A99 New RSA: 0xA19EBD34
 
Hello. I'm looking into different types of backup to help protect myself
from data loss caused by virus infections.

What would you all recommend as the best way to backup about 30 gigs of
data? Are there external Iomega drives that can handle that size? Would a
spare hard drive be better? Thank you.
Click to expand...

There are really two options. Travan tape backup is good but you are
only going to get a physical 10Gb per tape (maybe 12-15 compressed).
If you can handle that, great. DLT tape is good but the drives tend
to have serious prices . You can pick up a workable (new pull)
Travan IDE tape drive on eBay for around $40, tapes cost around
$20-$25 each (also on eBay).

Failing that get one of those hard disk drive bays that lets you plug
an entire IDE HDD in from the front, and a couple of 40Gb HDDs, and
copy to those. They aren't hot swappable, as a rule. These should
cost you about as much as a new tape drive anyway and would be a lot
faster.

You could go DVD but the two HDDs would probably be cheaper, and no
removable storage cost.
 
Jeff:

Yeah I know its a French company but...

I have two LaCie AIT2 wide SCSI drives and they have worked flawlessly. The USB v2.0 drives
can be had for approx 50% of the SCSI version.

Is DAT upto 72GB now ? We stopped buying DAT drives at 24GB. They are slow for that
capacity as well.

Dave

| In article <[email protected]>,
| [email protected] says...
| > I would suggest a USB v2.0 AIT Tape drive.
| >
|
| A 72GB DAT drive should be sufficient... I'd rather have a SCSI device
| personally.
|
| > It has higer capacity than DAT and is much faster.
| >
| > LaCie makes a good drive.
| >
|
| I've had nothing but trouble with LaCie's external CD-RW drives... Makes
| leery of trying any of there other products.
|
| --
| Cheers-
|
| Jeff Setaro
| (e-mail address removed)
| http://people.mags.net/jasetaro/
| PGP Key IDs DH/DSS: 0x5D41429D RSA: 0x599D2A99 New RSA: 0xA19EBD34
 
John:

Travan is good, but it is slow and the tapes have a high failure rate and can't be
reformatted, at least on my HP 8GB SCSI drive.

Also, if there is 30GB, he would have to swap tapes, that means watching the drive and the
time consumption. That's why I suggested AIT. Its a 50GB tape so tapes won't need to be
swapped and is very fast.

Dave

| On Mon, 4 Aug 2003 16:22:46 -0700, "Jeremy"
|
| >Hello. I'm looking into different types of backup to help protect myself
| >from data loss caused by virus infections.
| >
| >What would you all recommend as the best way to backup about 30 gigs of
| >data? Are there external Iomega drives that can handle that size? Would a
| >spare hard drive be better? Thank you.
|
| There are really two options. Travan tape backup is good but you are
| only going to get a physical 10Gb per tape (maybe 12-15 compressed).
| If you can handle that, great. DLT tape is good but the drives tend
| to have serious prices . You can pick up a workable (new pull)
| Travan IDE tape drive on eBay for around $40, tapes cost around
| $20-$25 each (also on eBay).
|
| Failing that get one of those hard disk drive bays that lets you plug
| an entire IDE HDD in from the front, and a couple of 40Gb HDDs, and
| copy to those. They aren't hot swappable, as a rule. These should
| cost you about as much as a new tape drive anyway and would be a lot
| faster.
|
| You could go DVD but the two HDDs would probably be cheaper, and no
| removable storage cost.
 
Jeremy said:
Hello. I'm looking into different types of backup to help protect myself
from data loss caused by virus infections.
Click to expand...

Or caused by whatever else ;-)
What would you all recommend as the best way to backup about 30 gigs of
data? Are there external Iomega drives that can handle that size? Would a
spare hard drive be better? Thank you.
Click to expand...

I'm "backupping" my stuff on OnStream tapes, but I'm not really happy
with it (too slow, and the USB device isn't always found when I switch
it on).

If I was very rich, I'd certainly buy a SCSI adapter and a 40 GB DAT
drive.

Or maybe I'd go for something like this:
http://www.hardtape.com/

Gabriela
 
Jeremy said:
Hello. I'm looking into different types of backup to help protect myself
from data loss caused by virus infections.

What would you all recommend as the best way to backup about 30 gigs of
data? Are there external Iomega drives that can handle that size? Would a
spare hard drive be better? Thank you.

Jeremy
Click to expand...
Think about either imaging or cloning your hard drive or the partition that
you want to back up. 30 gigs is a lot of data. A second HD slaved to the
master or an external drive (get one firewire capable) would be my
recommendation. Believe me; it's a lot better solution than dealing with
traditional data back-up.
 
Think about either imaging or cloning your hard drive or the partition that
you want to back up. 30 gigs is a lot of data. A second HD slaved to the
master or an external drive (get one firewire capable) would be my
recommendation. Believe me; it's a lot better solution than dealing with
traditional data back-up.
Click to expand...

And fast! Cloning to a backup drive (I use a removable tray) normally
takes only a minute or so for me since only new or changed files and
folders actually copy. Of course, the initial cloning of 30 meg will
take awhile. But after that, updating might only take a few minutes.

Art
http://www.epix.net/~artnpeg
 
On Tue, 05 Aug 2003 02:37:28 +0200 Thorin sat down and started singing
about gold. Gandalf entered. Gandalf said "Hurry up". After being
threatened with a cloven skull from one well placed blow, Gabriela
Salvisberg said:
I'm "backupping" my stuff on OnStream tapes, but I'm not really happy
with it (too slow, and the USB device isn't always found when I switch
it on).
Click to expand...

We have the SCSI version of OnStream and it takes about 2 hours to back
up 8Gb of data - slow is too mild a term for it ;-)
 
John:

Travan is good, but it is slow and the tapes have a high failure rate and can't be
reformatted, at least on my HP 8GB SCSI drive.

Also, if there is 30GB, he would have to swap tapes, that means watching the drive and the
time consumption. That's why I suggested AIT. Its a 50GB tape so tapes won't need to be
swapped and is very fast.
Click to expand...

David,

our mileage differs :-)

I have been using Travan TR20 tapes for two or three years and I have
never had any problems with any of the tapes. It (Seagate EIDE
drive) is immensely faster than my external SCSI HP DDS2 DAT, and
using the Veritas / Stomp backup software I have had no problems
relabelling and securely deleting tapes. They can't be reformatted
(in the sense of being bulk erased) because there is a servo track
written on at the factory - this basically defines the start and
endpoint of each data block - but it is hard to see why you would want
to: the secure erase process, in effect, gives the tape a good
workout.

Regards

John
 
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