[CLUE-Tech] Re: CLUE-Tech digest, Vol 1 #1521 - 12 msgs

[Steve Lowe]

>Message: 5
>Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2004 16:48:37 -0400
>From: Adam Bultman <adamb at glaven.org>
>To: clue-tech at clue.denver.co.us
>Subject: Re: [CLUE-Tech] Tape Drives - why?
>Reply-To: clue-tech at clue.denver.co.us
>
>Interesting thing to note here, is what I'm told is a new 'paradigm' in
>backing up (something I might actually try sometime in the near
>future):  Evidently some people have been buying a couple large hard
>drives, backing up to those, and then using the tape to back up that -
>it both allows for quicker backups on the servers (instead of writing to
>slow tape, you zip it off to the large, IDE drives, probably in a fast
>server with a gigabit connectino to the switch) and then transfering it
>to tape. You keep a few days worth of backups on the IDE drives, and you
>rotate things on and off.  If you need a file restored, you can take if
>off the drives if it is in rotation, or pull it from tape.  You still
>use hard drives, but mostly for temporary backup storage, not as the
>final solution.
>
>It sounds like a good idea to me - spare server, 300 bucks for a couple
>160-200 GB drives, and it'll save a lot of time backing up...
>
>Adam

As a customer of yours who frequently is working while your systems are
backing up....I'm all about minimizing that downtime! :)

And yes, I've actually seen a couple of systems doing this: second server
mirroring the first using rsync and then writing to tape.  IDE drives are
now up in the millions of hours MTBF, I'd think this would be a very
reliable, long term solution.

-- 
Steve Lowe