[ale] Good cheap tape drive? (was Re: [ale] Full filesystembackup to CD-R)

[Jeff Hubbs]

I got a Seagate Hornet drive (uses the 10/20GB Travan tapes - I think
TR-5) on SCSI.  It appears to work fine with all the mt and tar
commands.  One thing I find annoying is that premature end-of-tape
conditions is unclean and I don't think that hardware compression works
(you can, of course, use a z in your tar option but I understand that
that can wreak havoc if your tape gets corrupted).  I think the drive
cost about $200 and the media costs about $70.

Unless something else has supplanted it, DLT has been the "serious" way
to go for some time.  I understand that it's a lot faster than Travan
are any helical-scan business like DAT.  

- Jeff

On Thu, 2002-07-11 at 16:46, John Wells wrote:
> I agree that backing to tape would be much easier in the long run.  I'm
> trying to get in the habit of backing up (haven't been so disciplined
> lately).
> 
> That said, can anyone recommend a good, *cheap* linux-friendly tape drive?
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> John
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Joseph A Knapka said:
> > I happened to have my message-list window set to a width that
> > caused your subject: line to be abbreviated to
> >
> > Fu...ckup to CD-R
> >
> > :-}
> >
> > Anyhoo, IMO the whole "back up a giant HD to a slew of
> > little media" is a losing game. This is as true now as
> > it was in the days of 10MB HDs when all you had to
> > back them up on was 320K floppies. You can't automate
> > that kind of backup, so chances are it won't get
> > done often enough; it will take forever; and you'll
> > have to remortgage your house to pay for media. You'd
> > be better off in the long, or even the medium run, to
> > invest in something like a DLT drive. Alternatively,
> > just slap another giant HD in there and use RAID.
> >
> > I only ever back up my CVS repository, which easily
> > fits on a CDR. Everything else can be restored
> > from 3rd-party sources if necessary.
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> > -- Joe
> >
> > John Wells wrote:
> >>
> >> Does anyone know of a good, relatively easy utility that allows the
> >> backing up of filesystems or subsets to CD-R?  I'm looking for
> >> something that won't take days to understand fully or hack to get
> >> working.  I was taking a look at Mondo, but having some issues.
> >>
> >> Anything out there you've used successfully?
> >>
> >> Thanks!
> >> John
> >>
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> 
> 
> 
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