*BSD News Article 97950


Return to BSD News archive

Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.mira.net.au!news.netspace.net.au!news.mel.connect.com.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!news.wildstar.net!news.ececs.uc.edu!news.kei.com!nntprelay.mathworks.com!news.mathworks.com!fu-berlin.de!irz401!orion.sax.de!uriah.heep!news
From: j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: S:Experience with Backup-Options for home-use Workstation
Date: 17 Jun 1997 22:35:15 GMT
Organization: Private BSD site, Dresden
Lines: 32
Message-ID: <5o73f3$ja8@uriah.heep.sax.de>
References: <m3206bslxu.fsf@torus.cs.tu-berlin.de>
  <5nm6ph$342@mtinsc03.worldnet.att.net> <5nodhl$bnr$1@csnews.cs.colorado.edu>
Reply-To: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de (Joerg Wunsch)
NNTP-Posting-Host: localhost.heep.sax.de
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
X-Newsreader: knews 0.9.6
X-Phone: +49-351-2012 669
X-PGP-Fingerprint: DC 47 E6 E4 FF A6 E9 8F  93 21 E0 7D F9 12 D6 4E
Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:43086

atk@alumni.cs.Colorado.EDU (Alan T Krantz) wrote:

>  Exe.byte has a low end 8mm dat drive (750 for an external unit) but
> I have no idea if it is any good (anyone else know?). Also sony has
> some 4mm dat drives.

For something like USD 750, you should be able to get a longitudi-
nally-recording drive as well.  I'm a happy user of the Tandberg
TDC4222 (2.5 GB + hardware compression).  If you've got the choice,
pick them in favour of helical-scan drives (8 mm Exabyte, DAT), since
the latter are mechanically way more sensible due to their more
complicated mechanics.

As to the original question, technologies like Travan or Mini-QIC look
one order of magnitude less serious than DLT, QIC (``the real one''),
8 mm, or DAT.  Parts of the SCSI command set are often unimplemented
(some vendors even choose to omit commands that are mandatory per the
standard, so these drive cannot be considered to be SCSI at all),
Mini-QIC requires separate formatting, etc.  Given the reliability
requirements for a backup solution, i wouldn't trust them.  I hardly
trust DAT already (only by using a set of different tapes, and
partially using different backup methods independently).  You know
Murphy's law: while your backups used to work all the time, even if
you're careful to inspect them, you'll notice that all backup tapes
are gone just by the time your boot disk went south.

-- 
cheers, J"org

joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE
Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)