DAT Tape Backups

Rinkhals

Rinkhals

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I was last involved in a nightly backup procedure about 15 years ago.

Is DAT Tape still the way to go?

The sever is running Debian Lenny and it has a Hard Drive of around 10 Gig at the moment (could be upgraded in a year or so).

Where is the cheapest place to get a reasonably robust DAT Tape?

I'm in Jo'burg at the moment.
 
I think DAT tapes are kinda outdated.
16Gb Flash drives are under R300, is smaller and faster. :D
 
Holy Moley!

Frag me old boots!

I've just seen this.

R43,000 rand for a DAT Tape machine? EXCLUDING VAT.

I've been googling; can't see much of any use. Are backups not that important anymore?
 
I think you'll be wanting to go for LT0x ULTRIUM rather than DAT.
 
I see more and more people that uses HDD based backup devices. It is much cheaper than R2000/tape solutions, and also quicker.

For 10gig worth of data, I would simply mirror two 1TB disks, and backup to that. If you want to spend more money go for a RAID 1 + 0 (4 disks total) solution that will allow two disks to fail.
 
Drake2007 said:
I think you'll be wanting to go for LT0x ULTRIUM rather than DAT.
Click to expand...

Is this the sort of thing?

11 and a half grand.

Not sure if that includes VAT.

Also looks like the media are 200 notes a pop.

Might have to look at DVD after all.

Pardon my ignorance, but last time I looked DVDs had a capacity of around 4 Gig.
 
Rinkhals said:
Pardon my ignorance, but last time I looked DVDs had a capacity of around 4 Gig.
Click to expand...

DVD Dual Layer is 8GB. There's also the option of Bluray - 25GB to 50GB

e.g. LG BE06LU10 50GB BluRay/DVD/CDWriter ± R 2.2k for the drive, 25GB discs ± R80 each
 
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TheRift said:
Wouldn't trust a flash drive.
Click to expand...

Same as with tapes / DVD's. Any media can give problems.
You use one for each day (As per backup schedule), and as soon as it looks like they are giving hassels you replace it.

The advantage of 16gb flash drive is, they aer small, can be easily stored in the safe with out taking up much space, and they do normally last longer than tapes. (at same usage)
 
If the HDD is only 10gigs I`m sure you can fit your backups on a dvd. DLT is slow and a mission.
 
Thanks for the info chaps.

I reckon that my best solution is to go compressed DVD until they look like being inadequate and then look at my options again in a year or so.
 
What data is it, it may fit on a DVD. Would not recommend RAID as a backup strategy - it does not protect against a logical failure, i.e. user deletes all their files....
 
10GB... seriously... only 10GB? Why not a network drive or box with raid?

You'd be able to store a serious amount of daily backups with not a lot of spend. Most mobo's come with RAID 5 these days. Slap one together with 3 x 1 Terabyte drives (or even much small seen as you only need 10GB backed up) and you have backups for a long time.

Do you really want to write a DVD every night? I'd cry if I couldn't automate it.
I backup my whole lappy to a box using RAID 5 (Vista for all it's downsides does include an automated backup utility that compresses and copies diffs of my data to a network location). Not sure what backup utilities are out there for linux.

Also, if you are worried about the backups being on the same premises, consider off-site backup over WiFi if you have a property within LOS.

Or am I missing something here?
 
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shogun said:
Or am I missing something here?
Click to expand...

Possibly. There are a few reasons why backups are necessary: In the event of a primary data store failure the data can be restored. There are two types of data store failure, physical (drives crash, fire theft etc) and logical (DB corrupts, files are deleted). RAID protects against physical failure to a degree (1 disk failure, or two in some cases), but does not protect against logical failure -RAID will simply mirror the corruption over multiple disks.

Tape also enables a backup strategy which you may otherwise not be able to do with RAID or a remote disk, i.e. daily, weekly, monthly and annual. Tape is also a good way to archive data. In the end it depends on your needs, while RAID/disks versus tape may meet all your requirements, it is not a replacement for tape/DVD/removable backup media.
 
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