backup solution 4573
Shmuel, don't even try arguing with the "just use cheap IDE drives as backup media" people. Upon examination, you'll probably find that (1) they only ever do about two-three generations of backup, at most, (2) they see nothing wrong with having to shut down power to compensate for the lack of reliable hotswap, and (3) they don't even try for searchable backup-set catalogue systems.
Mostly, they tend to have backup confused with archival storage, and talk about the latter as if it were the former.
These are a lot like the sort of guys who, in former years, were the ones touting Colorado Jumbo drives as a reasonble backup solution -- solely because you could do 250 MB (with compression), and the drives cost only US $199. Of course, the (QIC-80 format) tapes were US $30 and up -- along with being dog-slow -- but you tend to ignore how crummy that is when you own only two-three tapes.
That's really an "archive". As I said, keeping six or twelve times one week's worth ofbackupis sufficient overkill for the purposes ofbackup-. Of course the problem of...
And you couldn't ever get through to those guys, either.
Well, the purpose is different. I imagine you want it as a final arbiter in case you grow doubtful about the authenticity of some backup files, for example. Or perhaps it contains files...
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