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Re: [LUG] Was easy backup program

 

On Wed, 2 Nov 2011, tom wrote:

Thanks for all your suggestions.
The problem I have is that there is a lot more than 1 dvd's worth so dragging and dropping is not really and option. I've tried making large archives but adding a 200 M bytes to a 4.5 gig ta.bz2 takes a lifetime - though mondo and others can create a collection of dvd sized archives for copying to DVD but I run out of disk space trying to create them locally and it takes several hours to do this over the network - though I may have a bash doing that on the backup server but the idea was to get the user to look after their 'non system' important trivia - like photos.

It is an intersting conundrum though..


Twenty years ago you could just get them to zip it all to a collection of floppies

Twenty years ago data requirements were much, much different from today and hard drives were "reassuringly" expensive, and a letter would trivially fit on a floppy drive - nowadays - you'll struggle to fit a single image off a 5MP camera on a 1.44MB floppy...

(Olde trivia - the first unix computer I used had a 3MB fixed drive and a 1.5MB removable drive - big 14" platters - it serves the needs of comp. sci. classes doing text editing, C programming and some database work adequately!)

One thing that's somewhat frustrating right now is that the prices of tape drives and their capacities do not match disks - with the curious situation that it's now cheaper & easier to use USB drives than to buy a tape drive and tapes - and still treat the USB drives as tapes (e.g. in one place I'm doing stuff for, we're still using amanda but treating the drive as a tape until I get round to re-writing it all using rsync)

Drives are arguably less robust than tapes though.

- maybe type in the command for them but basically leave them to shove in a new floppy when it beeps. I just thought that might have advanced to cds/dvds by now but we seem to have fallen between two stools. Its very very easy to make 1 cd/dvd but an absolute nightmare to do an efficient backup to multiple dvds. I've heard this is easy on windowz?

Splitting backups over multiple physical devices is the biggest PITA possible - especially when coming to restores. The plast place I used tapes in, I made sure that the server capacity was such that it was always less than the quoted tape capacity so the backups were never split over tapes. Amanda can cope with that though, but using Amanda in a domestic scenario with multiple PCs might be somewhat tricky.

If all your family are on Linux boxes then they could be backed up over the network, but I suspect what you're after is a backup medium that is instantly "usable"...

So go for USB disk drives before the prices really start to rocket...

I have written down all the detail so if I'm away they can retrieve any lost data from central storage but that, in a small office situation, involves a breach of security.

Not really - you make sure that no single person has all the root passwords and keep a sealed envelope in an on-site and off-site safe with the details. It ought to be part of the disaster recovery plans anyway.

Gordon

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