Backup devices - and software?

[bronto]

This all rings sooo true!  I gave up on tape for these very reasons 
about 6 years ago but had hoped/assumed that the technology had 
straightened itself out by now.  I guess not.  Even if the technology 
in *in theory* works well, the media itself is so inherently fragile 
I was always fearful that just transporting them off site in a hot 
car would ruin them.

Maybe cdr is the best solution?

If I'm looking at CDR then, what software works the best backing up to them?

Rob


>At 11:13 PM +0100 6/3/02, Iain Stevenson wrote:
>>Unreliability was the issue.  I bought a Travan NS20
>
>That's your problem right there, I'm afraid.  Nobody makes a decent 
>inexpensive tape drive any more.  I've heard of people having good 
>luck with Travan gear, but I've also heard of way too many problems 
>to trust it myself.
>
>To get good results with tape, you have to go with a minimum of 4mm 
>DAT.  But even that format has its reliability problems, and last I 
>heard all the manufacturers of 4mm DAT mechanisms had decided to 
>cease research on new upgrades to the format and start phasing out 
>production of DAT drives in favor of other formats.
>
>I have an Ecrix VXA-1 (custom high reliability recording method on 
>8mm AME media) and it seems to be quite solid.  The drives cost 
>somewhere between $500 and $1000 (forget exactly how much).  Media 
>is about $80 for one 33GB tape (66GB compressed), making the media 
>more costly than buying IDE hard drives.  (For that reason, and 
>because I haven't been using the tape drive much, I am contemplating 
>the switch to using HDs for backup; the advantages of tape don't 
>apply to my situation.  If somebody wants to make me an offer on the 
>VXA-1 drive I'll seriously consider selling it.)
>
>Despite the expense, last time I surveyed the options, VXA-1 was the 
>closest thing to a decent low end tape system out there.  The drives 
>are expensive but not as expensive as competing formats in that size 
>range, the media is large enough for many purposes, it's fast, and 
>it has some innovative technologies which at least sound like they 
>should solve many of the reliability problems with other low end / 
>midrange tape formats.
>--
>Tim Seufert
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