[ale] seeking backup system recommendations

[Vernard Martin]

> Here is what I've been considering.  I'd be interesed in other people's 
> impressions.
> 
> Buy an extra 1.6GB disk for $200-$250 and use a cron job to tar and compress
> your /home directories every night.  Everything else is on installation
> CDs.  Seems a lot less messy than tapes and cost effective too.

Here's my take on it.

1) You will always be tempted to use that "spare" 1.6GB disk as not just a
backup. 

2) Every time you power cycle that machine, you hvae a chance of using your
backup.

3) If you have a lot of files then 1.6GB may not be enough to keep
backups for a reasonable amount of time. There is something to be said for
keeping a full backup *every* night.

V
-- 
Vernard Martin, High Performance Parallel Computation and Experimentation Lab
(vernard.martin at cc.gatech.edu) http://www.cc.gatech.edu/people/home/vernard/
College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332
[Comic Book Collector, Linux Advocate, DramaTechie, Gamer, and GT ACM President]