@MSGID: 1:202/354.0 30a8f480 CS> 1) How long do you need to retain the backups? Not all CS> backup media will hold data for the same length of time. CS> Magnetic media usually degrades much faster than optical CS> media, for instance. WL> Most of my data backups will be what I'd consider WL> short term. Maybe a couple months, then I'd be cycling WL> back through the same media with new information. Magnetic media is OK, then. Tapes are generally the cheapest way to go and should be OK for your needs. CS> 2) How many backups sets do you need for safety? It is usually CS> a bad idea to have only one backup set considering how you CS> would have to destroy it in the process of reusing the media CS> for the next backup. And backup sets can turn out to be CS> unrecoverable for various reasons, so it is good to have CS> at least a few sets. WL> At the moment, my only backup system is copying to my WL> other harddrive the most important data. REALLY bad WL> idea to run a system like mine with no backups, but as WL> I used to have a 40 meg drive when I started, and now WL> have almost a gig, floppies don't work very well WL> anymore. = I gave up on floppies somewhere around 300MB of files to back up. I used an Irwin QIC-80 tape drive for a year or so, but it got to be a drag because even though it was advertised as getting 250MB per tape compressed the compression was never that good and realistically 180MB per tape was about the most I ever saw. After it started taking 3 tapes to back up, I sold that hardware and bought a DAT drive that gets 2GB per tape without compression. WL> I would be fine with two sets of full backups. So the media cost might not be critical for you. QIC tape drives become an option, then, whereas if you needs lots of tape then 4mm DAT and 8mm drives are far better choices even though the drives cost more. CS> 3) How much storage do you have to back up? CS> Also consider how much storage you might add during CS> the expected life of your backup system. WL> As I mentioned above, I have about 1 gig of storage, WL> but I'm only actually using about 600 megs of it at WL> the moment. I probably could very well add another gig WL> or two, easily, before I wanted to get a different WL> backup system. WL> For _ANY_ media, that could get costly. Actually, not really. For $8 or so you could buy a DDS-1 90m DAT tape that would hold 2GB uncompressed and around 3-4GB compressed with a realistic compression ratio. CS> 4) How much downtime can you afford during backups? CS> If you don't care, then a slower backup system CS> may help you save money. If you do care, a faster CS> backup system may be worth the extra expense. WL> Well, ideally, I'd like to run it in the background WL> (which also means I'd need something that works with WL> OS/2 ;) so even if it takes 17 hours, it shouldn't be WL> a big deal. Running in the background has drawbacks, however, as it is a good idea to do a verify pass after any backup and with a multitasking system that is changing files after they have been backed up but before they are verified, you will get a lot of verify errors but you may not be sure if they are a real problem or just because a file was changed. CS> 5) How much human intervention are you willing to tolerate CS> during backups? Media swapping takes some time and attention CS> and can prevent backups from being totally automatic, so CS> paying more up front for extra capacity or for an automatic CS> media changer may be worthwhile. WL> I could swap something as small as 20 meg tapes, if I Swapping tapes is worse than swapping floppies. Generally it takes several seconds to a minute to start using a new tape, whereas swapping floppies takes much less time before the backup system is actually writing data to the media. I absolutely wouldn't mess with any tape drive that uses tapes smaller than 120MB uncompressed. WL> had to. I will NOT swap 1.44 meg floppies. I'd WL> like to just plug in two or three media sets and be WL> done with it, but I can live with more. It's not time WL> critical for backups, really, as long as I do have a WL> good set of my -last- backups already avalible. WL> Depending on cost, a media changer may be worthwhile WL> anyway--but I am looking for technology for which WL> support will exist for a while. Hopefully nothing WL> that's quick, fast, and completely proprietary (unless WL> the company has really good support for it. ) As far as media changers go, DAT changers are generally the cheapest but you are still looking at $2000+ for such a drive. Fortunately,you don't really need that capacity. A single DDS-1 tape is more than enough for now and a DDS-2 tape would get you 4GB uncompressed if you're willing to spend twice as much for the tapes and about $100 more for the drive. CS> 6) Do you have media interchange requirements, such as being able CS> to send backup media to other offices or customers or service CS> bureaus? Not all backup media are widely used, and some are CS> proprietary to a single company. WL> No, I'd just be using it for my home system. My home system also WL> includes my business software and data, but it's all WL> on the same hard drives. _I_ am my business, WL> basically, so I don't really have any other offices to WL> which to need to send data. (Although, hey, that would WL> be cool! :) WL> However, I may be setting up another system here soon, WL> so it would be nice to have something external . . . WL> but I'm also looking at cost. You can put pretty much any SCSI backup device in an external case that has its own power supply for under $100. You'll also need cables and a terminator, and those could run another $50 or so depending on what type of cable you need. CS> 7) How much are you willing to spend? Backup systems span a wide CS> range of prices, from roughly from $100 to $10,000 for a PC CS> backup system. WL> I'm willing to pay a little above the "going rate" for backup systems, WL> as I would like to have my backup system expandable WL> (at least a little), but then again, I really don't WL> need anything complex, either. :) WL> Well, my answers may be a little vague. I appologize for that, but I'm WL> afraid I'm not EXACTLY sure what I'm looking for, WL> myself. :) I'm still looking for ideas at this point WL> in time, I'm not quite ready to just run out and WL> purchace. Have you had any new thoughts about your backup needs in the last few weeks? CS> For example, Conner has a tape drive on the market (TMS-4000?) that CS> uses the new wide QIC cartridges that store 2GB native and 4GB CS> compressed (assuming it really does get 2:1 CS> compression which depends CS> a lot upon the data being backup up) and operates around 27MB per CS> minute native speed with both SCSI and IDE/ATAPI versions available. WL> Well, now THIS is something I have not heard about. :) I guess with all WL> the DEC tape equipment I'm familiar with playing WL> around with at work, and all the cheap Colorado drives WL> that tote themselves off as 250 megs (but they are WL> only 125, they just use compression), I thought that WL> tapes were generally going to be slow, awkward and WL> very abundant for large amounts of data. :) You're thinking of dirt cheap QIC drives. Most of these attach via floppy interfaces. I would avoid these. they are slow,don't have hardware data compression, and are error-prone on multitasking systems. CS> DAT drives are another option, but for $400-600 you can usually only CS> get refurbished DDS-1 drives. A brand new DDS-2 drive will probably CS> cost around $800-1200, depending on the manufactuer. The HP C1533A CS> drive, for instance, is generally around $1000-1100 and provides 4GB CS> native capacity with backup speeds in the range of twice as fast as CS> the Conner TMS-4000 drive I mentioned above. Tapes are cheaper, in WL> How well (if you know) are these drives supported by WL> OS/2 and OS/2 backup software? (That's probably what WL> I'm going to be dealing with the most). The Conner TMS-4000 drives are supported by BackAgain/2 Pro. I recently bought that backup software and it seems pretty nice as it's got support for basically all SCSI-2 tape drives and many older SCSI-1 drives also plus support for backup to a network and to any other media that supports an OS/2 file system. Optical drives are supported, for instance, and Iomega ZIP drives should work OK, also. So far I've just been using BackAgain/2 Pro with the Archive 4324RP DAT drive I've had since mid-1993. CS> possible to buy ISO standard 1.3GB optical drives (which use two CS> sided cartridges taht get 650MB per side but must be flipped CS> manually) for as little as $595 via an outfit called Corporate CS> Systems Center. If you want a brand name new drive that uses ISO CS> 1.2GB and 1.3GB media, you're probably looking at $1000-2500. Media CS> costs are around $70-90 per 1.2GB or 1.3GB CS> cartridge. You may not be CS> able to use 1.3GB cartridges as they use 1024 byte sectors which are CS> not supported very widely on PC clone systems, so you might have to CS> use the 1.2GB cartridges that employ 512 byte sectors. A solution WL> This is a bit pricey . . . but, besides being more WL> long term and random access (and those are good points WL> straight off), are there any other advantages that WL> might make it worth the extra investment? Perhaps the WL> speed? I'm wholy unfamiliar with most optical drives. Optical drives generally are going to be a few times faster than tape drives, but again it depends on the drives you are comparing. CS> most. ISO 1.2GB and 1.3GB optical formats are also widely used at CS> this point, so data interchange possibilities are fairly good. WL> Now, this might be something to think about for my WL> system at work . . . being as there, I'm on their WL> budget. ;) And the backups we make there are general WL> pretty permenant. (Data dumped from various WL> intruments, such as our weather server or the radio WL> telescopes...) Optical disk is basically the best choice for long-term backups. CS> drives and roughly 2-3 times faster than many other optical drives. CS> The list price for an Apex drive is $1695 and the media costs about CS> $150-200 per cartridge. A backup system like this would be good for CS> long retention life, high capacities, and where the need for data CS> interchange isn't high given that it is very new and the media isn't CS> an ISO standard. WL> I tend to like to grab stuff once it's standard (even WL> if that standard is de facto ;) -- I've had some bad WL> scrapes with some non-standard hardware that looked WL> like it was the next generation, but turned out to be WL> nothing. :( Pinnacle Micro seems to be a fairly solid company and has been doing really well in the optical drive business. I think I saw a Megahaud ad in PC Magazine that listed Pinnacle Apex 4.6GB drives for around $1400-1500. -!- Maximus/2 2.02 ! Origin: OS/2 Connection (1:202/354)