Backup Solutions

[jonnyclueless]

I know this has been discussed before, but it's such an ever changing thing.

I am wondering what everyone's take on backup methods is. Right now I back up to firewire drives, but I really don't feel secure about this. Another option is to also have a DVD copy, but not sure I ike the idea of having a big stash of them laying around. Then there's tape backup, but from what I remember AIT tapes are generally about 50Gigs. And with drives being 300-400G these days it seems like it would be cumbersome.

I'm just not sure I like using only firewire, even if it's redundant (2 copies). It would be nice to have to pieces, a firewire drive, and another medium that mirrors the firewire drive (I guess AIT would have to have 5 or 6 tapes for each drive) Anyone have suggestions or opinions?

[T_R_S]

AIT 4 - One tape 200 GB uncompressed. More reliable than DVD and faster about 80 GB in an hour.

[jonnyclueless]

Originally Posted by T_R_S

AIT 4 - One tape 200 GB uncompressed. More reliable than DVD and faster about 80 GB in an hour.

I didn't even know there was an AIT 4. Sounds like a good solution. Any recomendations for a model?

[andreªs]

We just bought a Sony StorStation AITi520. No problems so far. It's really comfortable to have a 200+ GB backup medium. And it's fast.

[jonnyclueless]

I checked it out, it looks perfect.The price makes me queezy, but it seems all tape drives are up there. Gonna have to bite the bullet.

[hmurchison]

Backup to a RAID5 storage array and then archive to tape.

You can build an affordable RAID box that'll protect your data. Or you could back up to a SAN box like

http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=10647

The dichotomy right now with back up is chiefly this.

Tape is cheap...after you've shelled out beaucoup bucks for the drive.
Magnetic hard drives are cheap and fast but people don't trust them.

So the ideal situation may be to move to what the SMB and Enterprise markets are doing. Backing up to hard drive in RAID configs and then archiving the data to tape when it becomes necessary.

This gives them the fast backup/restore with the drives but also the longevity of tape storage.

Let's be honest. As long as you don't buy crap a RAID5 box will deliver and it takes two hard drive failures to destroy a RAID5 parity setup. That's a rare event.

What i'll probably setup someday is a system where my whole system disc is imaged using Acronis Trueimage or Symantec Ghost. Then I'll incrementally backup my new data to the image and then eventually go to a AIT2 or SDLT tape drive for archival.

Data loss sucks but the price of storage continues to drop so the odds are in our favor.

[Jan Folkson]

I just got a sony firewire AIT2 Turbo for about $1400. 80G uncompressed and does 42G/hour. Tapes are about $65/ea.

Model AITE200UL

HTH.

[T_R_S]

AIT 3 (100 GB tape) about $1600.00
AIT 4 (200 GB Tape) about $2200.00
try eBay.
Sony makes AIT Drives

[Chris Kress]

Sony AIT-3 user here. Make sure you buy a sony model and not an oem packaged unit. The sony 3 year warranty is valuable and not valid unless it a sony drive and sony external case. My AIT-3 has performed well so I would assume that AIT 4 is cool.

We tend to hand a hard drive to clients and use the AIT for our in-house redundant safety...