Advice - Switching From AIT Tape Drive to Firewire Drives

[mitchman]

I've been sucessfully using Retrospect Backup with the following system to backup data for about 3.5 years now:

 

G4 1 Ghz DP (OS 10.3.7)

Medea 160GB RAID (main storage device)

Atto UL3D SCSI controller card

Retrospect Backup v6.0.193

LaCie AIT tape drive (backup device)

 

 

Retrospect has been a lifesaver for me. I've never really had any problems with it. I now have a collection of 26 x 35GB AIT tapes. I don't backup via a network. The AIT drive is connected via a firewire 400 connection to my computer......simple!

 

I've noticed that the cost of firewire hard drives keeps coming down. In fact the cost per gigabite would be cheaper than what I'm paying for AIT tape.

 

35GB AIT Tape = $48 ($1.37 per GB)

250GB LaCie Firewire Drive = $170 ($0.68 per GB)

 

So I'm considering switching to firewire hard drives for backup purposes. I'm hoping I can just purchase ANY old firewire 400 hard drive and use it for back up. Once Retrospect says it's full, I'll install another one and continue the process. Eventually I can see a shelf full of hard drives.

 

Will this work? I assume that I can just start a new Backup Set and start the back up process.

 

Can I ever go back and delete old/unneeded data off one of the backup hard drives to glean more space for new backup data?

 

Thanks in advance!

 

Mitch (also planning to buy a new G5 Quad ASAP)

[hmseiden]

First you need to be aware that FW HD storage is nowhere as secure a storage media and AIT, nor is it as prone to long term reliability. The drive you put on the shelf today may not start up in five or ten years. The AIT tape (not the mechanism) probably will, if kept in a good environment.

 

Second, is cost really your only consideration? There is size, power requirement, speed of access, cabling, daisy chaining, hardware, and several more that come to mind to consider. It's your system, and your choice after all. It comes down to time and money. I must stop here as you don't mention how big your storage requirements are today nor how large you anticipate that growing down the road.

 

As for my situation, since you ask, I gave up on tape a while ago because my requirements are low, the cost of media, speed per MB, and equipment requirements. I store 8 weeks worth of data from my local system and network backups on two alternating FW400 HDs 200GB ea. (FILLS UP TO ABOUT 98GB/Drive over that time). I do daily backups of the local system and weekly on the two laptop clients (a Windows XP Compaq, and Mac G4 DVI). I recycle the backups after eight weeks automatically. I do a recycle backup at that time the others are incremental.

 

Many full restores were done over the years with Retrospect (beginning with Retro version 3 for Mac) that saved time and money when an internal computer's drives quit or failed, and some file resotres when accidental erasures happened. As there is nothing to prevent one or more of the HD backups from failing in a similar manner, my money's on the chances/likelihood of two failing at the same time to insure that I'll always have a restorable system one day (or a few days old, in the case of less critical laptops) old available. So far I've been lucky.

 

Good luck to you,

 

Henry