Re: I'm about ready to do SW-Raid5 - pointers needed

[maarten van den Berg <maarten@vbvb.nl>]

On Tuesday 28 October 2003 01:37, David Anderson wrote:
> Hi there.

Hi David,

You made some good remarks but I just wanted to comment on the last paragraph.

> A final reminder: Have efficient backup routines!! Raid will help you
> prevent disasters, but when a disaster does occur (not if, when), you'll
> need fast recovery with minimal loss.

I have a question about this.  With time, it becomes increasingly difficult to 
keep up with the massive amounts of data we all store. Just stating 'backup 
often!' doesn't cut it when apparently the disk drives follow Moore's Law 
perfectly but backup solutions do not.  I do not deny the need for backup, 
but how many people have a DLT IV 40/80 at home ? How many of you buy those 
DLT tapes, which are interestingly enough, MORE expensive byte-for-byte than 
the average harddisk (yes, you read that right). I have a DDS3 unit at home 
and a DVD burner. Still, keeping up with my 400GB raid array is very much 
work at best and near impossible at worst. I could put it all on 100 DVD+RWs, 
but to keep track of what has been backed up and where is just impossible.
The tapes work better but I do full tape backup ehm, like, once or twice 
yearly.  (yeah yeah I know...)
One of the cheapest "backup" mediums right now are harddisks themselves 
(weird, isn't it?) so it stands to reason some people try to build something 
that is foolproof (at least against hardware failure) using that, just disks.

How do you feel about this ?

Note that this has nothing to do with business situations; where the 
neccessary DLT drive and or -libraries are just bought from the budget.

Maarten

> David Anderson
>
> PS: did I tell you about the importance of backups? ;)

Yea. I think you did.   ;-)


-- 
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