[wellylug] Tape Backup Units

[Jamie Dobbs]

The more I think about it the more it looks like a couple of extra HDD's 
would be the way to go. Hot-pluggable bays would be great - can you 
recommend any? I feel that having the drives directly on the IDE bus 
would be a hell of a lot quicker than USB/Firewire, although I guess if 
I just start it backing up and go to bed then what does it matter.

Wood Brent wrote:

>What I have used for several clients recently is a removeable hard drive.
>Either USB2 or Firewire external drives, or a hot pluggable bay with a normal
>internal drive in a carrier. You can buy a couple of 120Gb drives & carriers
>for less than a tape drive & tapes, and a weekly dump (Ghost is one approach
>for Windows)
>to copy filesystems onto the backup drive is simple & effective, & may be
>adequate. The two backup drives are used alternately, so if summat fries both
>drives during a backup, you still have a copy :-)
>
>This also has the advantage that a properly mirrored backup drive becomes a
>plug in replacement for a stuffed one, without even a restore being necessary,
>or even removing the bad drive/filesystem, just change the boot device sequence
>in your BIOS.
>
>There is no right/wrong way, as everyone's requirements vary, just whatever
>suits you...
>
>Brent Wood
>
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