[mythtv-users] Lost my OS hard drive (also ran)

[Brian Wood]

On Tuesday 15 September 2009 15:57:53 David Brodbeck wrote:
> Brian Wood wrote:
> > In the "Old Days" we used tape or removable drive cartridges for backup,
> > if the drive failed the media would simply be put into another drive.
>
> Assuming it didn't eat the tape in the process. ;)

I've never had a DLT tape get eaten or otherwise fail.

>
> > But today tape systems with enough capacity to backup most people's data
> > are out of reach economically for most home users.
> >
> > Today the most economical way to back up is to another hard drive(s),
> > whether that be local or somewhere out on the net.
>
> It's also faster.
>
> My experience with tape has always been that it's slow, hard to manage,
> and not very reliable.  Disk-to-disk backup is, in my experience, a big
> win unless you need to ship backups off-site.

The cheap 1/4" (QIC) tapes did have reliability problems, especially the ones 
that hung on the floppy controller, but today's high-capacity tape is quite 
reliable, though of course you pay for that.

I'd be happy to trade speed for reliability, just let the B/U job run 
overnight and speed isn't that big a concern, at least not for me.

Drive-to-drive is certainly fast, but not all that reliable, unless you use 
multiple drives.


-- 
Brian Wood
beww at beww.org