[CLUE-Tech] Tape Drives - why?

[Richard Mancusi]

I have never HAD to do a complete restore (disaster recovery).  Tried
it once on a spare server and was less then happy with the results.
Individual files, often.  Some servers are for development.  These folks
always seem to forget to make a copy BEFORE altering the code.  Then
they move on to another project in mid-stream and eventually want
source from 10 days ago.  I have tried to stash backups else where on
the hard drive but they manage to find and torch those too.  Nothing like
a locked-up tape to solve that problem.  So far all restores have been
successful.

I am convinced that there is no one correct backup routine.  Even with
tape you could argue forever: Full, Differential and Incremental.  And
don't forget rotation choices: Son, Father/Son, Grandfather, ...
But the most important point is exactly what you said RESTORE.
All backups are garbage if you can't restore from them.  And anyone
who doesn't restore once in a while (even for practice) is just asking
for trouble.

Rich


On Fri, 30 Jul 2004 00:41:30 -0600, Match Grun <match at dimensional.com> wrote:
> With all this talk of backups... So you all take backups to your chosen
> media. How many of you have done a restore from backups? I guess that
> very few have. How reliable have you restores from backups been?
> 
> Match
> 
> On Thu, 29 Jul 2004 17:17:53 -0600
> David Anselmi <anselmi at anselmi.us> wrote:
> 
> > David L. Willson wrote:
> >
> > > OK, I'm no newbie, and I find myself asking the same damn question
> > > every time I get into the Backup & Disaster Recovery design process.
> > >  Why does any
> > > business with less than a TB of data to backup use tapes?  Why, why,
> > > why, when almost any fixed disk media is much cheaper and almost as
> > > easy to take offsite?
> >
> > In one office, I was using CDs.  When I outgrew that, I switched to
> > external USB drives.  This is nightly full backups taken off site
> > every day.  It happens to work in this case.
> >
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