External Hard Drive vs Tape Drive Back-Up

[PurePeon]

Does anyone have any preferences?? Any stories to tell about using each technology? I have a few servers at work that requires a back-up device and I am trying to decide which is better to use. There is probably around 400 GB of data to back-up.

 

[Vegito]

Tapes are good for retention.. I use a quantum atl m1500.. 20 tape loader using 2 drive.. SDLT 320

We're required to keep data for 5 years so every month I order 20 tapes..

SDLT are pretty good.. and yes one or two tape will fail but thats life..

forgot to say the system costed 22k 2 years ago.. backing up to drive would be cheaper if you dont need stuff from 2 years ago

 

[Matthias99]

It's really, REALLY hard to beat tape in $/GB. It's also very good for long-term storage and archiving. However, it's relatively slow (no random access, either!), and for vast amounts of data, you need a lot of tapes (so either you'll be swapping tapes all day, or you need an expensive autoloader with a large capacity).

I'd lean towards tape if you need to make backups you'll store for a long time, or if you need to keep multiple sets of backups going back months (or years). External hard drives aren't a bad idea for nearline storage/backups. What actually might make sense would be to build a 'backup server' with a bunch of hard drives in it. Have your regular servers back up to its (network-mapped and redundantly RAIDed) drives, and then have the 'backup server' dump to tape every now and then for long-term storage. Sort of a low-cost SAN approach.

 

[imported_NoGodForMe]

Tape.

I have a Sony DDS3 Dat drive at home, each tape holds 10 gigs uncompressed.
This is it right here.
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=40-117-003&depa=0

Tape technology is doing better these days. Sony has the new AIT-1 and AIT-2 drives that hold more. Check these out.
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=40-117-009&depa=0
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=40-117-010&depa=0
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=40-117-014&depa=0

You need an Adaptec controller to run the drive. The older DDS drive I have uses a 50 pin SCSI cable. The drives above use the faster LVD connector. This is the Adaptec controller I use, which comes with 1 LVD cable that will run 2 drives.
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=16-103-159&depa=0
You can get away with a 160 controller, but the 320 is nice and would be an excuse to upgrade one of the servers if you're not already using it, like this little bad boy right here.
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=22-111-138&depa=0

Then you buy the tapes, Novaback software from www.novastor.com, and you can start backing up. You will also need special ASPI drivers from the Adaptec site if running the drive on XP SP2. You get them from the Adaptec site, install them, and then XP will see the drive.

 

[LED]

I use HD's but Tape is the best

 

[ohnnyj]

Originally posted by: Matthias99
It's really, REALLY hard to beat tape in $/GB. It's also very good for long-term storage and archiving. However, it's relatively slow (no random access, either!), and for vast amounts of data, you need a lot of tapes (so either you'll be swapping tapes all day, or you need an expensive autoloader with a large capacity).

They are getting better, though. Some of Sony's AIT drives support tapes with a MIC chip that allows for pretty much instant retrieval of the data you need on the tape.

And it is true that the tapes themselves are rather cheap in comparison to a hard drive, the inital cost of the backup drive, autoloader, etc. is what kills you.

 

[PurePeon]

Thanks for the input. I was thinking tape drive would be the best solution also...