On 2/16/07, Barry Samuels bjsamuels@beenthere-donethat.org.uk wrote:
I've adopted the belt and braces approach. I have had a SCSI DAT drive for many years now, not the same one as they seem to fail regularly, but in the recent past I bought another IDE drive to mirror (not raid) my main drive on the assumption that should the main drive fail I just swap drives and continue on my merry way.
I have seen many comments on the Internet that using a second drive is the cheapest way of keeping a backup these days. If I'd relied on that idea I wouldn't have had anything to restore.
Relying on only one backup device is risky - I bet you have more than 1 DAT tape. You even mention the DAT drives fail regularly!
A number of removable harddrives (IDE, USB, or Firewire) used in rotation would give you the same strengths as a tape library, with great capacity per media item. Using an IDE (PATA or SATA) removable caddy will be faster than tape too. USB and Firewire harddrive enclosures usually only let you attach one device to the IDE connector inside, so there is no chance of Master/Slave screw ups or motherboard IDE weirdness.
Regards, Tim.