News from PANUG/BizNix - July 21, 2003 http://panug.org - http://biznix.org SCSI CD BURNER We'd like to do a presentation at an upcoming meeting and give out CD-ROMs of the software. However, our SCSI burner failed. If you have a SCSI CD burner (any speed) that you no longer need, we'd appreciate having it. TAPE by Ed Sawicki - Accelerated Learning Center / Tailored Computers My TAPE article generated lots of requests for additional information plus the feedback article from Ray Robert below. I should make it clear that my article describes how I do MY backups - not how I think you should. Plus, my article was short - as most PANUG articles are. It didn't mention that I periodically backup only my critical data to CD-R and put it in my box at the bank. My main purpose for backing up to my remote site is for recovering accidentally erased files and directories. While I can also use it for my disaster recovery, it's unlikly a larger organization can. See Ray Robert's article below for details. Since there's a lot of interest in the techniques I use, I'll do a presentation on the subject soon. TAPE FEEDBACK by Raymond L. Robert Oregon Board of Medical Examiners I agree with your main point that the economics of the tape vs. disk decision has changed. But if one's backup need is long-term, don't forget to include the costs of maintaining and running those hard disks for, say, 10 years. Almost a year ago HP put out the Ultrium 460 LTO, which is 200Gb native/400 compressed. Price is just a bit more than the 100/200 drives you mention. We're using one with a blend of RAID, disk, and tape backup to cover different backup/restore scenarios. Restoring previously deleted files is fine for those "Oops!" situations. But relying on RAID on your server for real-time tracking won't help if your building catches fire. A series of incremental backups that includes deleted objects may generate more information than your (new) system can hold. Worse, you end up with a bunch of identical and near-identical files. Sorting this all out is time-consuming in geometric proportion to the number of users and former users. All this when you're rushing to get your site back up. Backing up purely to disk on an off-site location introduces new risks. If your off-site location is itself not backed up to tape it should be on a separate power grid. If they do back up to tape, what is their tape retention policy? If it's longer than yours, data you thought you deleted is still around. If it's shorter, your data may not be around long enough. But the main objection I hear is the loss of control. Will the operators of the site honor a non-court subpoena from the record industry? [Ed: Data stored remotely, such as at a service bureau, should be encrypted. This _should be_ a non-issue.] If they notice something they think is suspicious, will they or must they report it? Is their site more or less secure than yours? XP DISK PARTITIONS by Ed Sawicki - Accelerated Learning Center / Tailored Computers In the unlikely event you need to use huge disk partitions with XP, the original release of XP Pro and XP Home have a 137GB limit. If you have larger drives or a larger RAID array on XP, you'll have to enable 48-bit LBA either by updating to Service Pack 1 or by adding a registry key: http://panug.org/35 DISCLAIMER PANUG and BizNix welcome contributions from all members. Member contributions do not necessarily represent the official positions of PANUG or BizNix. If you don't contribute, the views of members that contribute frequently may appear to be the official position of the group(s).