D Finnigan wrote:
Michael J. Mahon wrote:A corollary is that the best backup medium for a hard disk is another hard disk. It is much cheaper and infinitely more convenient to do a disk-to-disk copy than to play with changing removeable optical disks.Agreed. I've always had the notion that the safest place to store digital data is on a hard disk system. It's sealed, secure, and high-capacity. Of course, tape can have a nice long life-span as well.
No spinning storage device comes within an order-of-magnitude of commercial tape media (e.g. LTO-2,3,4) in terms of durability and lifespan. There's a good reason that literally all enterprise-level backup schemes use tape libraries instead of a rack of drives.
Prices for used LTO-2 drives and tapes have hit the "sweet spot" in the past year. I can backup my entire server (300GB RAID-5 array) on a single tape in less than an hour. The tape goes in my briefcase and travels to the office with me so there's always an off-site copy.
And I'll second the warnings about recordable optical media. NEVER confuse a CD or DVD with an archival backup! You may live to regret it...
Steve