how would you backup 1TB of data to dvds?

[Craig White]

On Sat, 2008-02-09 at 14:10 -0500, Robert L Cochran wrote:
> Peter Arremann wrote:
> > On Saturday 09 February 2008, Valent Turkovic wrote:
> >   
> >> I asked for a backup to DVDs, I need a cheap solution for chunks of
> >> 50GB every month.
> >>     
> >
> > Even then reliability of media and writers is likely not going to make you 
> > happy. Dual layer is tempting but the reliability of those is even worse than 
> > regular media. 
> >
> > You haven't said anything about the type of data you have. How well does it 
> > compress with bzip or 7zip? 
> >
> > LTO1 media are pretty reliable if you can keep the temperature at the right 
> > levels. They can be had pretty cheaply on ebay these days - 100GB a piece. 
> >
> > Peter.
> >
> >   
> I'm confused -- what is the advantage of using tape media (that is what
> LTO-1 is, right?) over a hard disk? How does the cost compare to just
> buying an external USB hard drive?
----
tape has 2 advantages...

1 - portability
2 - multi-state

Multi-state means you can have multiple copies, archive versions,
various copies over time. That doesn't mean you can't do the same with
external hard drives, but external hard drives require a bit more
planning and probably more cost.

I like to have several layers of backup.

RAID - initial redundancy...keeps you up and running
Tape or hard drive - rotational redundancy, several weeks of rotation
which gives me several copies of the same files
Tape or hard drive - archive redundancy, snapshots retained at various
time increments

Craig