[list] [ale] Need advice on home back-up solution

[Geoffrey]

Greg wrote:
> Since the $/GB factor seems in many respects to favor hard drives,
> why don't you install a removable hard drive bay and buy another HD ?
> That is what I did for a friend recently.  I installed 2 hard drives
> in a software RAID mirror configuration.  When he leaves for the
> weekend, he powers down the file server, takes out the 2nd HD and
> places it into a fire proof safe.  The removable hard drive bays are
> about $15 to $35 in cost.  They use a key to lock down the HD upon
> insertion.  The solution seems to fulfill all of his needs, which
> seem to reflect yours.

First of all, that sounds like a big pain in the ass. :)  Further, a 
harddrive just isn't as durable as a tape.  You probably don't want to 
chunk the tape backup into the trunk of your car, but you could.  I 
wouldn't do that with the drive.  I guess it also depends on how you 
feel about having an offsite backup.  If your drives are all in the same 
place, you're not protected.  Sure, the cost of a big drive is cheaper 
than a tape device, but that drive will eventually fill up, unless 
you're just blowing away your previous backup, which would mean you 
don't have a very robust backup solution.  If you cost out drives vs. 
tapes per gig, I suspect you'll eventually win on the tape side.

My backups are cdr's cause I'm too cheap to purchase a tape drive and do 
want to be able to take it off site easily.  I plan on moving to dvd in 
the future, but I've got to price that out.

-- 
Until later, Geoffrey	esoteric at 3times25.net

Building secure systems inspite of Microsoft