How do you guys go about backing up a ton of data?

[Salvador]

Damn.. I just got a dvd burner and it's still not enough data. I just hooked up a storage drive that I had and I have just over 100 gb's of data on it including mp3's, movies and other stuff. I'm sure that there are others out there with a ton of data on their hard drive. What do you guys do to back up this much data? I'm not about to burn 21 dvd discs.

Thanks,

Sal

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

Backup to other machines. Backup those machines to your machine. etc. At least two copies of everything, each copy being on different machines. (ghetto raid 5 )

 

[fredtam]

Another hard drive.

 

[Sundog]

Mirror drives....done with servers all the time.

And tape backups...

 

[Ionizer86]

Yep, I send stuff over 10/100 to my dad's pc. You can also use a large hard drive and an enclosure to make an external drive. That'll keep your data backed up against both hard disk failure and on-site risks (provided you store the drive somewhere else).

 

[AnotherGuy]

Yeah an external USB hard drive, like a 200 gigs should do...

 

[AnotherGuy]

Yeah an external USB hard drive, like a 200 gigs should do...

 

[whitelight]

external USB/firewire hd.

 

[Sid59]

dvds / cds stored in a dark quiet room.

i'd do the hdd thing but im afraid of it crashing. prolly be a long time to back up

160 gigs of data at this point. that's why i did incremental backups of things i really really need.

 

[aka1nas]

Thats why you do RAID 1 with your 160GB. The only thing that will trash it is if the whole computer is fried. Buy a good UPS to prevent that from happening as well.

 

[azev]

I cant believe anyone here is not using tape backup to backup their data....
LTO-1 Tape Drives 200G compressed data, cheap cartridge.

 

[Mrburns2007]

500 cd-r's

(((((( and your complaing about 21 DVD's ))))))

 

[ajf3]

About how much is a tape drive that supports the lto-1 cart? Also, how fast is the transfer speed?

 

[Atlantean]

Originally posted by: Salvador
Damn.. I just got a dvd burner and it's still not enough data. I just hooked up a storage drive that I had and I have just over 100 gb's of data on it including mp3's, movies and other stuff. I'm sure that there are others out there with a ton of data on their hard drive. What do you guys do to back up this much data? I'm not about to burn 21 dvd discs.

Thanks,

Sal

I would just burn 21 dvds because its the easiest then I would fill up the 100 gb hdd again.

 

[Alptraum]

I use DLT myself. Though its kinda pricey.

 

[jamesbond007]

Why on my file server, of course. 1.6TB and counting! ^_^

 

[Hamilton]

Originally posted by: aka1nas
Thats why you do RAID 1 with your 160GB. The only thing that will trash it is if the whole computer is fried. Buy a good UPS to prevent that from happening as well.

That won't help you if you get a virus or corrupted files. RAID and backup aint the same.

 

[aka1nas]

This is just his video and mp3 collection, not his mission critical data. I would get it in a RAID array so you alleviate the risk of your one big drive dying(I am actually gonna be doing the same thing with my file server when I get some more cash), and then burn to DVD at your leisure. Also, keep your OS on a seperate drive from your data as to minimize the chance of a rogue viruse wreaking havok. I don't know of any viruses that would trash your video files or non-os partitions(doesn't mean they don't exist, but they aren't so common that you hear about one every day at least).

 

[CraigRT]

i transfer to my 2nd pc.. it's got 120 gig in there.

and i burn the odd DVD

 

[Chunkee]

lighterfluid and matches

 

[Hamilton]

Originally posted by: aka1nas
This is just his video and mp3 collection, not his mission critical data. I would get it in a RAID array so you alleviate the risk of your one big drive dying(I am actually gonna be doing the same thing with my file server when I get some more cash), and then burn to DVD at your leisure. Also, keep your OS on a seperate drive from your data as to minimize the chance of a rogue viruse wreaking havok. I don't know of any viruses that would trash your video files or non-os partitions(doesn't mean they don't exist, but they aren't so common that you hear about one every day at least).

You don't think loosing ~100GB of video and mp3 is critical? I sure wouldn't want to loose that much.

 

[Markfw]

Originally posted by: Alptraum
I use DLT myself. Though its kinda pricey.

I do too. My DLT-7000 drive was only $350 (ebay)and I already had the SCSI card to support it. That LTO-1 mentioned above sounds interesting. I may have to look into that. I can backup 20 gig/hour on my DLT, so that 100 gig would be a afternoon to do it, but at least you would only have to change tapes 2 or 3 times.

Edit: I just looked up LTO. $3,500 !!! No way, whoever suggested that for a regular person should have their head examined.

 

[beatle]

Whenever I upgrade I always double my storage. I have ~120GB in a spanned volume in my backup server and a 120GB in my desktop. I use Viceversa to mirror the data over to the spanned volume. When I upgrade I'll buy a 250 and roll the 120GB drive into my spanned volume.

 

[oldfart]

Floppies are cheap these days. I buy them by the truckload!

 

[DT4K]

Originally posted by: oldfart
Floppies are cheap these days. I buy them by the truckload!

83,000 floppies X $0.25 each = $20,750.00
And that doesn't even count all the storage boxes you would need, plus the time it would take to build the database to keep track of them all, and the paychecks of all the people you would need to hire to help enter all the data.
Hmm, I don't think that's the best idea.

It's pretty mind boggling to know your hard drive holds as much data as 83,000 floppies.