Topic: best backup ?

[tranbert]

Hello !

I need to install a tape backup on e-smith server. Found a lot of info on this forum, but...

Wich is the best solution for a 40 G0 drvive. The compatibility list is not very useful on e-smith site.

Could you recommand one known working solution, scsi or ide, kind of a "best buy" ?

[rob fantini]

I'd suggest using a dds-4 trive.

dds tapes are cheap.  I bought a IBM dds-4 drive from Pc-Connection for about 800$ .  
 The max caacity is 40-gig though.  So that'd leave you no room for growth. But if 40 is the max you expect I'd use a dds-4 drive.
 here is a blurb from ibm:
'...need a reliable backup/restore device can benefit from the
combination of capacity and performance offered by this tape
drive. It has a 3.5" or 5.25" half-high form factor and gives you a high storage capacity of up to 20GB native capacity and up to 40GB with hardware data compression. You get a fast 2.75MB/s native transfer rate (5.5MB/s with compression) with efficient hardware data compression. The tape path is sealed so it's immune to dust. This drive is downward read/write compatible to 4/10GB DDS/2, 12/24GB DDS/3 and DDS-4 tape drives. '

[Jason Ebacher]

If you don't want to spend $800 just set up one of your existing workststions with a couple extra cheap 40gig IDE drives(around 89.00) and copy your data direct...

The best thing is if something happens you can restore very quick and easy, at work we built a backup server, 6-40 gig drives, one for OS and 5 removable drives for monday thru friday, so we can take them offsite. We also tried software that compresses the data so we can get well over 80gigs on the 40 gig drive but it is slower than direct copy...I guess the concern for us is the data not the e-smith OS, We are more concerned with some one deleting or traching files not the server crashing (it's running linux why would it crash, and if it did it would only take a hour to redo the OS) We also run hardware raid mirroring in the e-smith server so we are pretty safe. trust me the direct backup to drives over the network saves tons of time when you need to restore, no cataloging the tape etc. just copy the files you need to restore and you are done...

The other nice thing is once you direct copy the data you can scan it for virus's and prevent a potential virus out break...try doing that with tape...we had a little spat with a virus that attached to .JPG files it got through the users Anti Virus and it was no problen because we caught on the backup and saw that it was in a users folder, and tracked it to the user and killed it, We deleted the files that were infected and restored them in less than a hour...now thats called secure...

Jason

[tranbert]

>just set up one of your existing workststions with a couple extra cheap 40gig >IDE drives(around 89.00) and copy your data direct...

Yes !!! That is a solution, we just want a unique backup of all e-smith datas, and at home iIm using an old Dat 2/4Gig for that, always the same tape inside, so a HD is of course cheaper and makes the thing !

Is ther a way to use any automatic backup pattern to do it ?

Btw : if the backup HD is on a win station, how do you manage to copy all e-smith data on this win HD ?

Just an idea, using "save to desktop" with a little configuration and a cron task could be a solution ?

How did you do it ?

Thanks