Removable Storage With Big Capacity?

[jasonroehm]

I currently have a lot of data residing on hard drives, which I know aren't the most reliable form of storage. I'm looking for some sort of removable drive that has a good amount of storage per disk. CDs just don't cut it, as I have greater than 60GB to back up. Basically, I'd like something with >20GB per disk, if that's available. Anyone know of any drives like this? Doesn't matter if they're SCSI or EIDE, I can purchase a SCSI card for the task. If anyone knows of any of these drives, their cost, and their media's costs, I'd appreciate any advice you guys could give. Thanks.

 

[WetSprocket]

You might try a travan tape drive. I've seen some that were 8 gig and 20 gig. Maybe even a dvd-r I think they are around 4 gig or so.

 

[dullard]

Cheapest and fastest method: buy another 60GB hard drive. Price: $120 ($2/GB).

If you get a DVD writer it will cost at least $300. Then the blank DVDs cost about $10 a piece ($2.13/GB for the media).

I'm not up to date with tape drives. However the ones I've seen are extremely slow. I think you can get some that are about $500 for the drive and $2/GB for the tapes ($1/GB compressed if you don't mind even slower operation).

 

[WarCon]

I agree with dullard, removeable media just hasn't kept up with hard drive size. Can you imagine a tape drive backing up 20gig(let alone 60gig)? I remember the hours it took to back up one gig with a tape. Another hard drive that you can simply remove is a much better solution. Or you could get a RAID card and use an identical drive to make a constantly ungraded backup.

 

[tcrosson]

If you want cheap removeable storage then try www.castlewood.com. They make a 2.2GB and 5.7GB drive with each disk costing around $40 - $50.

I would really recommend an external firewire drive (www.Pricegrabber.com)or even consider just adding an additional internal drive as dullard suggested.

 

[jasonroehm]

Well, adding another hard drive isn't really necessary at this point; I have more than enough storage on hard drives; I was just thinking another form of media may be more reliable. I remember a few years ago there magnetic/optical storage was popular; I didn't know how large of disks you could get with those. Anyway, thanks for the suggestions, I'll go check it out. If anyone knows any other solutions, I'd love to hear them. Thanks.

 

[WarCon]

Heck, when you consider cost of storage and backup speed. There just isn't anything that can compete with an additional 60gig drive that you plug in your system to backup. Do a Ghost to it and then put it away. Or just do a hard copy using your hard drive utilities provided by your hard drive manufacturer.

If you go the removable media route you will end up spending over $500 bucks to back up 60gig.

I think you could get 3 or more hard drives for that cost...............IMHO.

 

[tcrosson]

I think if you really want space to store data at a reasonable cost per/MB then the an external USB2.0/Firewire drive is your best bet. That way you could at least store everything off site for security (in case your place burns down) and you'd have your data portable to boot.

If you're not that paranoid about fire or need to share data (or backup multiple systems) - then just go with an additional internal drive.

 

[Vincent]

Fast tape drives are expensive, but worth the cost if your data is valuable.

The one I have is here:

http://www.ecrix.com/