[NTLUG:Discuss] Backup solutions

[Leroy Tennison]

Patrick R. Michaud wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 28, 2007 at 09:15:31AM -0500, Chris Cox wrote:
>   
>> David Stanaway wrote:
>>     
>>> Leroy Tennison wrote:
>>>       
>>>> I've been asked this twice recently.  My thinking is tape or CD/DVD with 
>>>> the latter being preferable for small situations.  Are there other good 
>>>> alternatives?
>>>>         
>>> LTO3 baby.
>>>       
>> I'll vote LTO3 as well (but $$$$).  The nice thing about LTO3 is that
>> you'll saturate your bus to the unit before you reach the
>> transfer limits of LTO3.
>>
>> Another possible alternative is disk.  Disk is fast and
>> is also quite cheap.  Might even consider USB disk.  Then
>> you have a portable solution that can be connected to
>> multiple computers one at a time for backing up (it's
>> flexible).  Might be a more cost effective "small situation"
>> backup solution.
>>     
>
> USB microdrives are getting to be pretty large, too -- larger
> than CD/DVD.  Here's a couple with 8GB/12GB capacities:
>
>     http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/drives/8714/
>
> Pm
>
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>
>   
Thanks to all for the input, I hadn't even thought about USB as an 
option.  The requests have come from very small operations so I doubt 
spending $2K+ for LTO3 is even conceivable.  Although I've never had any 
trouble with CDs or DVDs one of those asking hasn't had good success 
with them.  In both cases my "target" is true disaster recovery - the 
hardware is gone for whatever reason (the hard drive fails, something 
destroys the computer including the backup device).  Protecting against 
"Oops" is some concern.

The bane of tape used to be "but can you restore it on a different 
unit?"  I've been away from working directly with backup for a while so 
has this problem been resolved?

One of my requests came from a decidedly non-technical type, if I 
considered a disk backup option it would need to be really user 
friendly.  Anyone have experience with "drive caddys"?  Any "gotchas" 
with that approach?

Again, I really appreciate all the feedback.