DescentBB

This is very odd, but I think if anyone uses it (it's all I have, dunno about others) it should be mentioned.

I burned several backups of my homeroot folders (development, personal and game - data/profiles/etc) onto DVD's. My folder tree is only 5-6 levels, I'd say. One or two might go to 8-9 levels...

In my development folder..the @#%$ing important one, the last folder off every root chain is empty. The folder is there, but no files. This is very very bad as I keep the photoshop source files and all other images in a subfolder off the main project folder, as well as mini-knowledge base stuff, archived code, install packages, etc..Client code went totally missing..technical manuals and specs..an entire website code repository.

This is on every backup dvd I've made since I bought a dvd-burner. I first thought of permissions..can't read the files to burn them?..but, no. I set explicit permissions on each homeroot folder, and propegated them a long time ago, and never touched them again. The burner is ok, as I've burned many dvd movies and data.

Luckily, I'm a spazz about backups, and I have stuff burned all over the place. I have a current full development backup on a regular cd, and restored everything. What's wierd, is it only accurred in my dev root. My personal root and my gaming root were fine. On all the dvd's.

I can only blame the DVD portion of the software. At least, I'm guessing. I used DVD-R disks. I've had no probelms with regular CD's, I just culled everything off 100 CD's I burned in the last year or so, and everything was there.

So unless someone knows anything that would shed light, this is a head's up.

What format the DVD was created in ? IIRC there are path length restrictions for some..

I've know about problems burning CDs or DVDS using any software. If you have more than 7 subfolders and file names that are to long, it will copy the files but the size will be zero. My wife encountered this years ago.

Thanks for the heads up. I do network backups to another PC but I'll pass it along to my DVD-happy friend.

hmm, good to know, thanks

For some reason I don't trust self-written optical media for backups.. Thanks for reminding me why

and what do u use?

If u ask me as long as u CRC everything before and after you burn optical media is pretty much as reliable as you can get.

ISO9660

I've had directories 15 levels deep without problems before, on a CD. I get a msgbox saying "More than 8 levels, may not read on some operating systems. I'm guessing they mean win98, win95 or *nix.

The longest path that ended up empty was "M:\Development\Projects\Archive\Aramark\Reporting\Images\" That's not too long.

Matrix wrote:If u ask me as long as u CRC everything before and after you burn optical media is pretty much as reliable as you can get.

Yes, they're pretty reliable immediately after burning. But over time the reliability decreases. Mostly due to my own carelessness, I will admit, but still, optical media isn't suitable for my personal backup purposes.

Backing up onto carved granite is probably the most reliable.

Transfer rates stink though.

My sister currently has about 100GB of Digital Photos on her PC right now (Pro photographer).

So far I only have her setup with 2x Maxtor 160GBer's in SATA RAID1. And then I do periodic DVD backup's.

But those photos pretty much mean her life, what do you guys think would be the MOST RELIABLE way for another backup besides the RAID1?

I was thinking another HDD in a removable tray (or external encloser) that she could stick in, sync, and then pull out and store in another location in case of lighting / power surge / fire etc.

Or maybe tape drive? I know absolutely zero about these though so I wouldn't know where to start or if they are even used anymore.

What do you guys think?

if you ask me, the safest way to store relatively small amounts of data is by putting it on the internet in multiple sources.

ie: get your sister to mail her photos to herself in gmail.

the internet was designed with war in mind anyway, it's robust

Roid, I wouldn't be comfortable with that. GMail may be private and supposedly personal, but the fact that it's out there is scary. Who knows where it'll be in 30 years?

No, I consider RAID1 fairly reliable if you keep an eye on the disks. If one disk fails and you keep running a broken mirror, it's just as bad as a single drive.

I bought a removable harddrive to back everything up, and I have two copies of everything important on two different disks in my computer. I keep at least three physical copies on harddisks, replacing harddisks as they age.

USB or firewire external hard drive

older CDRs were almost as bad as Iomega Zips
(who got sued and lost for bad reliability)

i was working more from the standpoint of redundancy.
you wouldn't just put it up on gmail (but you could, and then as time goes on if gmail looses your trust you can move your information to somewhere new that's trusted - it really is an active system so you'd have to keep involved, a definite disadvantage ), you'd put it up on various multiple places around the internet. the cool thing about internet redundancy is that is hardly slows you down (your access to these backups is centralised to any internet access point).

it's cheaper and easier to manage than hiding 10 seperate identical backup flash drives around your friends houses (redundancy).

i love redundancy. mmm

Hmm, emailing 100+ GB of files to ur self would be kind of impossible, would take like 3 years + gmail is only 2.5GB right now

And 100GB on any type of net host would cost A$$ loads

I think some form of local storage is the way to go.

Day-um!!

Tape backup? Are you kidding? What slow garbage, unless you can find me a tape drive with equal storage, price, and speed compared to current IDE drives.

You can buy a fireware 400gb hard drive for $300. Drag the entire contents of your drive onto it. UNplug it from the computer AND from the power outlet. Now you have an extremely fast and reliable backup system. Even smarter is TWO 200GB drives, one for regular backups, another that goes in a safe deposit box / PO box maybe once a month so you survive a fire or other disaster.

This is what I do ;p Triplicate backup with remove locations can't be beat. It's cheap too.

but if you wanted a specific file off a backup... tape is a convient method if you are only concerned about backing up huge amounts of data and restoring them in one big go, and for matrix, it be a viable option if the cost of the drives were somehow waived.

But for the average person here, tape drives are far too costly - tho I agree with xciter on hard drives - not a useful long term offline backup media(they are fragile, I learned myself that with my mp3 player).

Wouldn't tapes be considered fragile, too, at least over the long run? They would be prone to breakage, fraying, or just general wearing out, wouldn't they? Provided that you handle a hard drive carefully, I'd think that it'd be a more solid option than a length of magnetic tape; maybe I'm thinking too much along the lines of cassette tapes, though, since I've never actually seen one of these data tapes.

i'm talking about spending $200 on a second hard drive.. how much for a 300gb tape backup?

For a basic solution (where you're not actually backup 300GB on a regular basis), The drive itself will be around $150 (the one I linked to is compatible with Travan tapes and can do 10GB/tape uncompressed or 20GB/tape compressed) and the tapes are usually around $35 a piece.

Jim, everyone knows that if you drop a drive it might be no joy. Everyone knows that if you have a surge on the grid, it might fry your rig. But the thing is, if you have multiple copies in different locations, you can afford such a misfortune. It's exactly against that kind of thing you're protecting yourself by backing up to a removable drive and store it elsewhere.

PS: Citing a 1000,000GB nightly backup is just ridiculous in this context You know why you need those tape backups at work? With all the drives you need to store 1000,000GB and with MTBF being what it is, you have a statistical chance that a drive fails somewhere pretty much every day.

Hmm, purely because of the price of the tape drives I don't know if they are really going to be an option for my sister...

Xciter, for backing up a constantly growing stock of pictures thatâ??s currently at about 100GB, how big of a tape drive would u recommend?

And do u normally do compressed or uncompressed backups with your tapes?

i'm more intruiged as to some specifics about this nightly petabyte tape backup system.

does it use multiple tapes? how large are they (physically) and how much data do they each hold? is it all kept onsite, is is shipped out everyday, or is it transmitted directly to the storage system as data (via network link)?

i'd like something to go on, i've never really pondered such gargantuan MOBILE data storage techniques, but it'd be good to know something if you can help out our curiosity.