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Contribs.org Forums => General Discussion => Topic started by: mauro on October 23, 2018, 10:58:54 AM

Title: Advice on tape drive
Post by: mauro on October 23, 2018, 10:58:54 AM

Hello!
Small 3-people office here. As a daily backup for the server, we have been using so far a DAT72 internal USB tape drive; the amount of data is below 10G. Now, after about 11 years of honest service, the tape unit is failing (I guess worn tape heads) and I am wondering what to do.
A modern tape drive unit seems a bit overkill in terms of capacity and cost. I'm not even sure if the server has available SAS connections.

What is your experience for small offices, what would you suggest? Should I bite the bullet and replace the tape drive, or change backup strategy?

PS we have also a daily backup via BackupPC to an external NAS (two HDD in Raid) and periodically we do a full clone of the server using Affa to an old machine.

Title: Re: Advice on tape drive
Post by: ReetP on October 24, 2018, 03:19:22 PM

First thing is check what connections the server actually has.

Bearing in mind you already have a couple of other backup methods (nice to hear !!!!) you could just pick yourself a replacement off ebay I guess?

Alternatively just an external USB hard drive ?

With your Affa backup you could leave it on a schedule and make sure it is more regular - once or twice a day even. Remember it only does a full backup on the first run and after that just diffs so it is pretty fast after the first run.