External Tape Backup Recommendatons

[rw120555]

I currently have a Seagate Travan 4 internal Tape backup unit - does 4 GB uncompressed, 8 GB compressed. I want to get a higher capacity external unit, preferably USB and $500 and under. I don't anticipate accessing the backups often, I mostly just want disaster recovery capability. Backups would typically be run overnight, so being able to finish within 4 hours (maybe 8 hours with verification on) is ok. Current system is a Pentium 400 with Win 98 but future systems may be Win XP on a much faster machine.

Based on description alone, the Seagate 10/20GB TRAVAN TR5 USB TAPESTOR seems reasonable -- around $320 at Buy.com. Does anybody have any experience with this drive? Any recommendations for something better, that isn't exorbitantly more expensive?

Ability to read old Tr4 and Tr3 tapes is nice but not essential. I'm willing to consider alternatives to Travan tapes, but I don't want to spend the thousands of dollars I see some drives going for.

Thanks for any advice. RW

 

[rw120555]

For all you tape drive experts who have been logged off the last few days -- here is another chance to answer this question. Thanks for any help. RW

 

[mp3turbo]

hello,

for $300 you can have big HDD and use it as a "dupe" or twin in mirrored RAID configuration. If you need to backup only approx. 10GB of data, you'd better end with 2x 40GB HDD (~250$). One for mirroring live disk (should your original disk fail, you'll see no interruption in operation, just one light go out and this counts!), the other one for "real" backups (if someone deletes file from your original HDD, it's deleted from mirror also - mirror is mirror because BOTH drives hold the same content in each moment, every write operation is performed on BOTH driver simultaneously).

That's my opinion. For $300 or so, I'd buy two disks. If you don't want to use mirroring, you can connect each of those drives to two machines on your network (if you have one) and copy files over it at night. If you'd have to backup 600GB daily, that would be another story

bye, mp3turbo.

 

[rw120555]

Thanks Mp3. I think the 2 hd route is very good in many cases, but not for me. I have some huge data sets (I can easily fill 50GB or more) so I may need 2 hds just for my regular uses. I also want to be able to store backups off-site in case of disaster (fire or theft) and I may want to use the tape backup on more than 1 machine. And, this machine is not currently connected to a network.

So, some sort of external backup that can handle at least 20GB compressed is the way to go (luckily, much of my data will compress at better than 2:1, but even so the bigger the better). RW

 

[nsxdemon]

I'm in a similar situation where I'm gonna need some serious back-up capacity in the coming months...I'm actually looking at the Seagate internal 10/20GB Travan Tapestor at buy.com...I don't really wanna go the external path since I don't really have the space for extra drives outside the computer itself...with internal i can just keep it inside the case all the time.
Are there any larger IDE formats that 10/20GB's?? If so, I'd love hearing about them, since I'd probably opt for the larger format...don't have any SCSI stuff and I don't wanna jump in with a tape drive first (will need a controller as well of course), so I'll have to go with IDE for now.
nsx

 

[rw120555]

I think I finally found the right search terms at ZDNET. I notice Onstream has 30GB IDE and USB drives, and pretty cheap too. Don't know anything about quality or reputation. Lots of other options are listed at this link as well. Again, any advice or recommendations are appreciated.