Tape vs multiple DVD for backup

[J.Clarke]

Looking for a way to do nightly unattended backups of around 10G
(compressed) overnight...

The last time I personally used tape to backup a computer I had to
clean the heads and erase the Osmonds first. I had a quick look round
the web today to see what is available and the Seagate Tapestor Travan
20/40 (external USB 2.0 model) caught my eye...

Personally I'd avoid a Travan--go for a DAT or 8mm.

Leaving aside this SCSI vs USB vs Firewire issue for the moment...Is
tape a good choice?...

Do tape drives still require regular head cleaning,
Yes.

retensioning

Travans yes, DAT, 8mm, DLT, and LTO no.

even
untangling?

Only if something went horribly wrong.

The retail price for the USB 2.0 model seems to be just under £400
+tax. For this price you might be able to buy several DVD writers
(perhaps 3) and a nice external enclosure box to put them in.

The recorded discs could be inserted into any PC with a DVD reader (eg
not just the PC with the tape drive) and perhaps files could be
manipulated more easily if I wanted to recover just one file.

If I wanted to do a full system restore I could make a boot disc using
my favourite backup program put the DVDs in the PC's existing DVD
drive. (eg avoid having to re-install windows first).

The HP tapes can do this as well--just stick the right tape in the
drive, push the button, and a while later you have your system back up
and runninng.

 

[CWatters]

Looking for a way to do nightly unattended backups of around 10G
(compressed) overnight...

The last time I personally used tape to backup a computer I had to clean the
heads and erase the Osmonds first. I had a quick look round the web today
to see what is available and the Seagate Tapestor Travan 20/40 (external USB
2.0 model) caught my eye...

Leaving aside this SCSI vs USB vs Firewire issue for the moment...Is tape a
good choice?...

Do tape drives still require regular head cleaning, retensioning even
untangling?

The retail price for the USB 2.0 model seems to be just under £400 +tax. For
this price you might be able to buy several DVD writers (perhaps 3) and a
nice external enclosure box to put them in.

The recorded discs could be inserted into any PC with a DVD reader (eg not
just the PC with the tape drive) and perhaps files could be manipulated more
easily if I wanted to recover just one file.

If I wanted to do a full system restore I could make a boot disc using my
favourite backup program put the DVDs in the PC's existing DVD drive. (eg
avoid having to re-install windows first).

Is USB 2.0 a good choice...

One external enclosure I've seen supports 4 drives on one USB 2.0 channel
but I've also got 4 free USB 2.0 ports on a PCI card I could use. What kind
of real world data rates do you get from USB 2.0? I've seen reviews of the
Tapestor that suggest the USB bus is limiting but presumably they were using
USB 1 when those were written back in 2001.

Colin

 

[Rod Speed]

Looking for a way to do nightly unattended
backups of around 10G (compressed) overnight...

Surely you arent actually generating 10GB compressed of new stuff every day ?

One approach is proper incremental backup instead of mindless
brute force image backup of the entire system every night.

The last time I personally used tape to backup a computer I had
to clean the heads and erase the Osmonds first. I had a quick
look round the web today to see what is available and the Seagate
Tapestor Travan 20/40 (external USB 2.0 model) caught my eye...

Basically tape has passed its useby date now for personal desktop backup.

Leaving aside this SCSI vs USB vs Firewire
issue for the moment...Is tape a good choice?...

Nope. Lousy value for money now.

Do tape drives still require regular head
cleaning, retensioning even untangling?

Yep, thats the nature of the medium. And because its a
tiny niche market now for desktop backup, the prices are
silly compared with mass market products like hard drives.

The retail price for the USB 2.0 model seems to be just under £400 +tax.
For this price you might be able to buy several DVD writers (perhaps 3)
and a nice external enclosure box to put them in.

Yep, and thats the problem. Quite a few hard drives too.

Even just a single say 120GB external hard drive allows you to
keep a series of 12 overnight backups before you need to delete
one too and the total price is much lower. And its much faster.

The recorded discs could be inserted into any PC with a DVD reader
(eg not just the PC with the tape drive) and perhaps files could be
manipulated more easily if I wanted to recover just one file.

Yep, and in spades with a hard drive to store the image files.

If I wanted to do a full system restore I could make a boot disc
using my favourite backup program put the DVDs in the PC's
existing DVD drive. (eg avoid having to re-install windows first).

Is USB 2.0 a good choice...

Yep, quite adequate. Tho if you're going the external hard drive
route its generally better to get one thats USB2 and firewire
capable and use the firewire when you can easily. Its a bit faster.

One external enclosure I've seen supports 4 drives on one USB 2.0
channel but I've also got 4 free USB 2.0 ports on a PCI card I could
use. What kind of real world data rates do you get from USB 2.0?

The short story is that its down a bit on
an internal hard drive, but still very decent.

I've seen reviews of the Tapestor that suggest the
USB bus is limiting but presumably they were using
USB 1 when those were written back in 2001.

Very likely.

Personally I'd give tape a miss and use an external say 120GB hard drive instead.

 

[Andrew Rossmann]

[This followup was posted to comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage and a copy
was sent to the cited author.]

Looking for a way to do nightly unattended backups of around 10G
(compressed) overnight...

The last time I personally used tape to backup a computer I had to clean the
heads and erase the Osmonds first. I had a quick look round the web today
to see what is available and the Seagate Tapestor Travan 20/40 (external USB
2.0 model) caught my eye...

Leaving aside this SCSI vs USB vs Firewire issue for the moment...Is tape a
good choice?...

Just how much do you want to back up at a time? How often? Do you plan
on keeping backups for awhile? Will you be around to change media if it
fills up? How much do you want to spend? How important is the data you are
backing up?

Tapes can be used over and over, letting you rotate through them, but
there will be a high first-time cost to buy several. RW versions of DVD
can also be reused, although I'm not certain how long they'll last, or how
reliable, or how what the speed would be when you reuse one.

I would avoid Travan. I read there is a new higher-capacity format, but
the tapes are huge and not very reliable. As I say that, I do have to
admit that I have an old (1996) HP T4000s TR4 drive in my home computer. I
still use it occasionally for small backups using Veritas Backup Exec.

I use DAT DDS3 (12G native capacity) on two servers at work with no
problems. I just run a cleaning tape once a week. Tapes and drives are
reasonably cheap. Most tape drives really only work with dedicated backup
software like Backup Exec (which is only corporate oriented now), and
Stomp Backup MyPC (formerly Veritas Backup Exec, formerly Seagate Backup,
formerly Arcada Backup.)

Outside of Travan, you are pretty much limited to SCSI. I think most, if
not all DDS and higher-end tape formats are SCSI only.

 

[Odie Ferrous]

You are all getting it horribly wrong.

Ten years ago, a 40Megabyte hard disk cost around £400 installed. A
tape streamer (Colorado internal) cost pennies in comparison, so many
home users and almost all business users backed up regularly. (Of
course in those days, a business could backup their Sage accounts data
to a couple of floppy disks.)

Nowadays, a 40Gigabyte drive costs around £45. A decent streamer costs
around 8 times that amount. Hence very few people buy them. Instead,
they are going for the cheaper option of hard disk backup.

For a start, hard disk backup is very inexpensive. However, hard disks
DO fail and are not nearly as robust as a decent streamed backup. Not
only that, but the hard disk tends to remain in situ - so a fire, flood
or burglary would see a quick end to the backed up data. The clever
business is one that streams their backup to suitable media, and takes
that media offsite each night.

I find it incredulous how supposedly knowledgeable people are
recommending hard drive backup as the medium of choice. It is so
unbelievably wrong.

Odie

 

[Rod Speed]

You are all getting it horribly wrong.

We'll see...

Ten years ago, a 40Megabyte hard disk cost around £400 installed.
A tape streamer (Colorado internal) cost pennies in comparison,
Bullshit.

so many home users

A few home users...

and almost all business users backed up regularly.

More bullshit, particularly with small business.

(Of course in those days, a business could backup
their Sage accounts data to a couple of floppy disks.)

More bullshit.

Nowadays, a 40Gigabyte drive costs around £45. A decent streamer
costs around 8 times that amount. Hence very few people buy them.
Instead, they are going for the cheaper option of hard disk backup.

Plenty use CDR for the data that matters.

For a start, hard disk backup is very inexpensive.

CDR is even cheaper.

However, hard disks DO fail

Yes, but thats only going to be a problem if BOTH the drive being
backed up AND the backup drive both fail at the same time.

And anyone with any sense writes the data that they'll slash
their wrists if they lose to CDRs as well as using the hard
drive backup that makes restores more convenient if the
drive being backed up dies. If only to protect against the
possibility that the entire PC and the backup drive are
both stolen at the same time or consumed in a fire etc.

and are not nearly as robust as a decent streamed backup.

More bullshit with the drive itself. Hard drives
are much more robust than tape drives.

Not only that, but the hard disk tends to remain in situ - so a fire,
flood or burglary would see a quick end to the backed up data.

Sure, but only a fool uses JUST a hard drive for backup.

The clever business is one that streams their backup to
suitable media, and takes that media offsite each night.

And anyone with a clue uses CDRs for that irreplaceable backup
and uses the hard drive for convenient and quick restore when
the drive being backed up fails, as some inevitably do.

I find it incredulous

The word you want is incredible there. Its the individual thats incredulous.

how supposedly knowledgeable people are recommending hard
drive backup as the medium of choice. It is so unbelievably wrong.

I find it incredible that fools like you cant manage to grasp
that there aint just tape and hard drives for backup.

 

[Lynn McGuire]

For a start, hard disk backup is very inexpensive. However, hard disks

DO fail and are not nearly as robust as a decent streamed backup. Not
only that, but the hard disk tends to remain in situ - so a fire, flood
or burglary would see a quick end to the backed up data. The clever
business is one that streams their backup to suitable media, and takes
that media offsite each night.

I find it incredulous how supposedly knowledgeable people are
recommending hard drive backup as the medium of choice. It is so
unbelievably wrong.

How about multiple USB2 external hard drives that are rotated offsite ?

Thanks,
Lynn McGuire

 

[Roger Blake]

How about multiple USB2 external hard drives that are rotated offsite ?

What happens to such drives if you fumble and drop them onto a
hard surface? (In comparison, what happens to a DVD-RAM disc or
DAT tape?)

 

[Eric Gisin]

There are no problems dropping a modern tape cart or CD/DVD. The problem with
CD/DVD is scratching the top while handling.

Dropping a hard drive causes the heads to lift then slap down, often
destroying them.

|
| What happens to such drives if you fumble and drop them onto a
| hard surface? (In comparison, what happens to a DVD-RAM disc or
| DAT tape?)
|

 

[J.Clarke]

What happens if you fumble and drop a Tarvan tape drive?

You don't have to take the tape drive out of the machine, carry it out
to the car, drive across town, take it out of the car again, and carry
it to wherever you are going to store it in order to make an off-site
bakcup--you do have to do that if you are using hard drives as removable
storage.

The danger of dropping a drive used as removable storage is the same as
the danger of dropping a tape, not a tape drive. And anybody who claims
that he has never dropped a tape needs to hang a "yet" on the end of his
statement.

And most of the tape drives I have seen are not such precision devices
nor are they so fragile that a drop will kill them.

 

[Neil Maxwell]

There are no problems dropping a modern tape cart or CD/DVD. The problem with
CD/DVD is scratching the top while handling.

This is certainly a problem with CDR, but with my limited experience
with recordable DVDs, it's not an issue any more. The DVDs I've been
experimenting with the last few months have a polycarbonate layer both
above and below, with the dye layer sandwiched between.

I went to destroy the data on some test disks by scraping the top
layer like I do with CDRs, and was unable to damage the data layer
until I snapped the disk in half.

I don't know if all DVD disks are built this way, but it's a big
improvement on the ones I've been using (Memorex 4x, made by Ricoh).


Neil Maxwell - I don't speak for my employer

 

[Walt]

Very true.

Today, one could buy a 20G HD drive for less than one Travan
tape.

My suggestion, buy a couple of HD drives and a removable
carrier. It costs less than one tape drive and one tape.
When you feel a need to backup, plug in a HD drive and do it.

Another alternative, is to buy a RAID 1 controller or a RAID 1
adapter (DupliDisk), and a second HD. This way, you get
automatic and continuous backups. I think that is cheaper too.

 

[Walt]

What happens if you fumble and drop a Tarvan tape drive?

Also, Tarvan drives have a nasty habit of killing belts.

 

[Lynn McGuire]

How about multiple USB2 external hard drives that are rotated offsite ?

What happens to such drives if you fumble and drop them onto a
hard surface? (In comparison, what happens to a DVD-RAM disc or
DAT tape?)

I cuss, throw the trashed hard drive away and buy another ? And my
offsite backup will have to be repeated tomorrow.

DVD-RAM disc ? DAT tape ? Hah ! Our last backup was 106 GB.

I use a VXA-2 tape right now but am considering moving to a USB2
external hard drive system of 5 to 10 drives. I bought a WD 200 GB
external USB2 drive last week for $288. The only real problem that
I see is the monster weight about 5 pounds. PLus has an external
2 pound power transformer.

Lynn

 

[Roger Blake]

DVD-RAM disc ? DAT tape ? Hah ! Our last backup was 106 GB.

Well, then you obviously need a different solution, and I'm sure that
with care a strategy using removable or external hard drives will work
out. However for situations where the capacity is adequate my current
favorite is DVD-RAM.

 

[Roger Blake]

adapter (DupliDisk), and a second HD. This way, you get
automatic and continuous backups. I think that is cheaper too.

At least until you experience fire or theft. Or need to retrieve
an accidently-deleted or munged document from a week ago.

 

[Odie Ferrous]

Oh, how misguided you are, speed.

Odie

We'll see...


A few home users...


More bullshit, particularly with small business.


More bullshit.


Plenty use CDR for the data that matters.


CDR is even cheaper.


Yes, but thats only going to be a problem if BOTH the drive being
backed up AND the backup drive both fail at the same time.

And anyone with any sense writes the data that they'll slash
their wrists if they lose to CDRs as well as using the hard
drive backup that makes restores more convenient if the
drive being backed up dies. If only to protect against the
possibility that the entire PC and the backup drive are
both stolen at the same time or consumed in a fire etc.


More bullshit with the drive itself. Hard drives
are much more robust than tape drives.


Sure, but only a fool uses JUST a hard drive for backup.


And anyone with a clue uses CDRs for that irreplaceable backup
and uses the hard drive for convenient and quick restore when
the drive being backed up fails, as some inevitably do.


The word you want is incredible there. Its the individual thats incredulous.


I find it incredible that fools like you cant manage to grasp
that there aint just tape and hard drives for backup.

 

[Rod Speed]

Some gutless ****wit pom desperately cowering behind

Oh, how misguided you are, speed.

Even a gutless ****wit pom should be able to bullshit its way
out of its predicament better than that pathetic effort, gutless.

 

[Odie Ferrous]

Rod,

Does your therapist know you have access to a computer?

Odie

 

[Rod Speed]

Some gutless ****wit pom desperately cowering behind

Does your therapist know you have access to a computer?

Even a gutless ****wit pom should be able to bullshit its way
out of its predicament better than that pathetic effort, gutless.