how would you backup 1TB of data to dvds?

[Robert L Cochran]

Valent Turkovic wrote:
> On Feb 9, 2008 7:15 PM, Jacques B. <jjrboucher at gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>> 2008/2/9 Sam Varshavchik <mrsam at courier-mta.com>:
>>
>>     
>>> Valent Turkovic writes:
>>>
>>>       
>>>> How would you backup 1TB of data in a server with 4x 250GB drives all
>>>> mounted as separate mount points to a set of dvds using tools
>>>> available in fedora, centos or rhel?
>>>>         
>>> One terabyte divided by 8 gigabytes per double-layer DVD comes out to 125
>>> DVDs per backup.
>>>
>>> Are you out of your freaking mind?
>>>
>>>       
>> If a dual layer takes 10 minutes to burn (just a guess, don't own one)
>> including time to prep the next one, it would take you 1250 minutes,
>> or just over 20 hours of continuous burning.  That doesn't factor in
>> the time to chunk up your drive accordingly.  So you'd have to be
>> offline for at least 2 days.  Your dual layers would cost you about
>> $125.  A 1TB external drive starts at around $300.  Is it worth all
>> that time & effort to try and save $175?
>>
>> Jacques B.
>>     
>
> Ok, how would you backup 50GB then. Ignore 1TB. The question still stands.
>
> Valent.
>
>
>   
Like (almost) everyone else here in this forum, I simply can't advise
using DVDs for backing up that amount of data. There are better solutions.

1. Put a 60 Gb laptop hard drive in an external 2.5" hard drive
enclosure, connect the enclosure to a USB port, format the drive, and
copy your 50 Gb of data to it. Total time to do the copy is a few short
minutes at most. Not hours as with DVD.
2. Better yet, get a Western Digital Passport drive in any size 80 Gb
and over, plug it in to a USB port, and do step #1. You can back up more
data this way.
3. Copy your data using scp to another machine. This can be slow
depending on your internet connection, but someone I know transferred
1.2 Gb to offsite backup this way at 19 kbps. It took 28 hours but the
backup is offsite and the person simply started it and forgot it during
that time, until it ws finished.

DVDs scratch from handling, are very bulky, are hard to keep in exact
order, use huge amounts of your time, and you never know if a given
backup DVD had a bad burn.

Any of the 3 methods above provides a more time-efficient approach. And
you won't have to carry around hundreds of DVDs that soon become a
disorganized mess.

Bob Cochran
Greenbelt, Maryland, USA