Gini Posted May 23, 2002 Report Share Posted May 23, 2002 I would like some feedback on our proposed backup strategy plan. We have been doing network backups for 13 (soon to be 15) Mac computers using 4.3 and Jaz drives. I have heard from several sources that Jaz discs become undependable after much use (and ours have had more than much use). Also we will be needing more Jaz disks and they are not cheap. The computers we back up are in two buildings. I'm thinking of locating a large new hard drive in each building to contain backups from the other building. Then most backups could run at night (because disks wouldn't have to be switched in and out) and backups would exist "off-site" without moving disks or tapes around. In order not to run out of space we would periodically backup important data files to CD or some other removable media to archive. Does this sound like a good plan? Are hard disks good backup media? Does anyone have suggestions about issues I may be missing? Thank you for any feedback you can send. Gini Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
impala Posted May 28, 2002 Report Share Posted May 28, 2002 I don't know how fast your network connection between buildings is, but if I understand you correctly, you are doubling the traffic on the network by doing it this way. Get a SCSI DLT tape drive. The drive lasts forever. The media lasts almost forever. Do not get any other tape mechanism. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gini Posted May 30, 2002 Author Report Share Posted May 30, 2002 Thank you for your response, Impala. Unfortunately I work in a grant funded environment and convincing the powers that be to put out the expense for a tape drive is pretty unlikely. In the long run I'm sure this would be the wisest way to go and I'll try to convince someone . . . Most of the backups will be done automatically at night -- only the laptops during the day. I don't think network speed between the two buildings will cause problems. I access a large database in the next building and speed seems not to be a problem. Any better and cheaper alternatives to hard drives? Gini Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
impala Posted May 31, 2002 Report Share Posted May 31, 2002 No... I know what you mean. I work for a state university, and the guys with grants are considered lucky. Don't be tempted by cheap DDS tape drives. You get less than you pay for. I've had nothing but pain and suffering from those. I have an ancient DLT 4000 tape drive and can still use the ORIGINAL TAPES! You can still find DLT 4000s around new, and there should be plenty of used ones (on ebay?). They are very rugged, so I wouldn't worry much about getting a used one. All you need is a narrow SCSI-2 (fast scsi) connection, nothing fancy. If your data is small, CDR or CDRW is not bad. But 700MB fills up fast. Finally, hard drives seem to be your only other choice to me. And they are cheap! Regarding network performance: I'm a little confused by your plan. You have clients in two buildings. You want to put a new hard drive in each building to contain the other building's data. Um, do you have one retrospect backup server for the whole group or two servers, one for each building? If you have one retrospect backup server, how are you getting the data to the hard drive that's in the other building? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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