To: Dave Hanson who wrote (1217 ) 6/8/1998 6:34:00 PM From: Sean W. Smith Read Replies (2) | Respond to
Should preface this by saying I agree with Peter's point that ideally, one would have both backup solutions. This is true only if you backup the entire drive as one partition. If so, than this is right. But in most cases, it's the data and the OS that really need backing up. Again, a fair point given your configuration. Since I configure differently, I can easily keep 6 or more images of my boot partitions all on the extra hard drive, and try each of them out in < 5 minutes. Is this reasonably convenient on modern travan drives? I must admit, I'm not very familiar with modern travan systems. I reckon they works much better than the crappy little tape drives I recall from the early-mid 90s. A fair point. I've never had a problem, but then I've only had a few minor drops, and I gather tapes are built to withstand pretty high g forces? You grant that HDs are faster, and I would certainly grant that speed isn't the primary factor. I would ask, just how quick are 4 GB tape drives these days? (BTW, is it 4 gigs uncompressed?) By extra convenience, I mean things like accessing the data on the spare drive easily on another system, using advanced bios setups to access them given a failure and make backups on the fly (i.e. Fastrack RAID), and similar permutations I gather you've had good luck with tapes, and know your way around them. Do the drives require much TLC and replacing? Again, by having multiple partitions. I have a 11.5 gig drive, with compressed data and OS partitions of no more than 5-600 megs apiece. That gives you a lot of room to "play around" without deleting anything. Jaz and Syquest often can do this (albeit at slower performance), Sincere thanks for the rejoinder. Since you are obviously both much better versed with tape backup than I am and sold on it as a reliable solution, I (and others, I'm sure) would welcome any further thoughts you have on the matter--best configurations, best brands, your own backup routine, etc. that you'd care to share.
