I know there still out there but their prices are out of most home users (and SOHO) price range or I just keep missing the reasonable priced ones. So what are people doing if they got about 15 gb of data they have to backup weekly? Are people using alternatives?
I don’t want to know about cd-r cd-rw drives - they are not good for regular backups of that much data.
I just today heard (from Kim Komando) about a new DVD CD-RW that will write 7.4 GB to an $18 CD (I don’t know what the unit costs).
I use an Exabyte 8 mm - it does 14 GB per tape, but it’s a bit pricey (~$900).
What home user has 15GB of data that needs to be backed up weekly? That’s a helluva lot of data that changes on a weekly basis.
If someone is doing such work at home, then investing in a tape backup is a worthy expense, but for 99.9% of home users, a standard CDR/RW or Zip backup is sufficient.
That’s a good point, Montfort. But in my case, I like to back up the whole thing- O.P. and all.
As it stands now, it takes up about 17-20 gigs.
What I did was simply get a second hard drive. It cost about a hundred bucks and backups are very fast.
If the current configuration or O.P. craps out on me, I simply move over to the second drive.
Easy and cheap.
http://outpost.com has a 8GB Travan USB Tape Drive for $309.95. That was the first one I found with a quick search. Another option would be an external hard disk. Again, outpost.com has Maxtor 40GB drive for $244.95. Finally, you could go with an Iomega Jaz drive with about 2GB of capacity for around $350.
i used to have one for backup, but now that blank CDR’s are about 5 to 10 cents each - and you can access them directly, why bother with tape drives? That’s the real reason home users don’t have them anymore. If you have a CD writer, that’s all you really need. Large businesses that have 15gigs changing every day/week may need something else… but the typical home user doesnt.
Yikes!
I don’t ever want to back up my O.P.'s… I haven’t had one yet that I want saved forever.
I meant to say O.S., of course.
And while I’m here-
Those prices are awfully high, JeffB. I got my Maxtor 40Gb internal for a hundred and twenty about four months ago. A week after I bought this one, I was at the same store and the price had dropped to a hundred bucks even.
And the truth is, why would you want an external anyways?
I second the idea of having a second hard drive (or a third depending on your configuration) to back up your data.
My extremelly crucial data ends up on ZIP disks (and even some not so crucial stuff) but for the most part I have another hard drive to back up my stuff to as well.
Partition a large large to give you OS, programs and then data and a second drive to back up the data.
The other option (rather than getting a cumbersome tape drive) would be to get a mirrored drive…usually you are looking at SCSI drives which are a tad faster than most IDE type drives and are very expensive but the data is written on the mirrored drive with no effort on your part. If your main drive goes down…bingo, restore it with your mirrored drive. (not that easy but it is pretty easy.)
Otherwise a tape back up is all you can consider if your not willing to use up some time installing a CDRW and backing it up that way.
Tape still has it’s use in some narrow applications but I think that given the cost of multi-gig tape units, mechanical complexity of the tape handling mechanism, relative delicacy of the tape and the fact that retrieving data is only possible serially vs competing random access backup media, that tape is not going to last much longer as a viable backup solution, especially when we start dealing with 100 gig data sets and the need to back them up reasonably quickly.
What you all collectivilly said seems to be the case (resistance is futile). I have a nonworking 10/20 gb travan hp tape drive and usually backup every week but the drive doesn’t work any more :(. I was looking into the replacement options and it doesn’t look good.
Maybe I can get it repaired. The drive itself came w/ a scsi card so an external scsi drive might be an option but I would feel better with 2 so one can be stored off site all the time - but the cost doubles - and i don’t know if the scsi card that came w/ the tape drive would work for an external HD.
The backup actually backed up 3 computers on a network. The most important data I have backed up on another computer on the network (so it is on 2 computers) - not the most idea but if the main HD crashed I still have a copy.
I would think a usb HD would be too slow as it is limited to 12mb/s while the network runs at 100 mb/s. Not that it wouldn’t work - just it would take too long.
“Maxtor 40GB drive for $244.95.”
Whoa, that’s expensive. Aren’t they are around $120.00 in a store after rebate?
k2dave, you get yourself a sort of Raid setup & an extra HD or two, then you have a perfect backup all the time. Raid cards for the home PC are quite affordable now.
handy I have considered a raid system but due to my lack of understanding of them I am left w/ the following assumptions that make it unsuitable:
1 - a raid system can’t be used for off site storage. (also there is only dialup internet there)
2 - if a virus hits or someone accidentally deletes a critical folder it is gone off the main HD and the raid HD
3 Hi Opal
Am I wrong about my assumptions?
Although I still use tape backups for network storage (run it on an extra machine overnight and it’s almost invisible) I haven’t found a way of using tape to backup a PC/Windows system and restore it completely.
(If you are using a Windows backup program, some essential system files are locked and cannot be copied. And dropping down to DOS is becoming increasingly difficult and clumsy.)
But here’s what I think is the best solution to backing up a PC workstation. The next time you buy a hard drive, buy two of the same size/model. Also install a “mobile rack” or two in your case. Each hard drive fits in one mobile rack module and can be slid in and out (with the power off!) in just a second.
One hard drive is the active one; one is always a backup. Using an image-copying program that works outside of Windows like PowerQuest’s Drive Image or Partition Magic, clone the active drive to the backup. It takes only a few minutes even for big drives.
Now you have two identical copies of your data and system. If one goes down, the other can be instantly plugged in in its place and you have just reverted to the system status that existed when you last cloned the drives.
I even swap the active/backup drive each time to even out the wear.
I suggest that data files be backed up independently and on a more frequent basis than the cloning procedure. For this, CD’s work pretty well for me.
A firewire drive would give you a considerably faster theoretical throughput bandwith at 100-400 megs per sec so, but given the bus to platter contraints of most affordable, non-exotic drive designs there is no way you’re going to get close to a true bus to drive platter (not internal drive electronics) 100 mbs transfer rate (your networks theoretical throughput) with even the fastest drive(s) and network.
With respect to the real world network speed (assuming 10/100 ethernet install) given OS overhead and network IO contraints you probably won’t be seeing a true network transfer rate anywhere close of 100 mps per sec either so a fast firewire drive should not have any problem keeping up with your IRL network transfer rates.
A portable Firewire drive would probably get you closer to a practical off site backup solution than most other options. In addition they not all that expensive. You will need to install firewire cards (about $ 25.00 each) in all but the latest PC’s however.
If you want to roll you own you can get an external FW kit for an IDE drive for 95.00 or so and slap the latest sppedy 7200 RPM/100 gig Maxtor into it for around 300.00 or so. The 40 gig and 60 gig 7200 PRM units are only 105.00 and 157.00 respectively.