backup advice sought

[Joel Hammer]

How many bytes are you needing to backup?
If not gigantic amounts and if this is really important stuff, I would :
1. Make at least two backup copies.
2. One could be to a 2nd hard drive in the same computer.
3. The second could be to cdrom or dvd, and stored off site.
This would be the most straightforward.

There are all sorts of other things you could do. Get a
junky old computer (likely free), install linux (free),
install a big hard drive, network it, and store your
stuff there.  To safeguard things more, leave this 2nd
computer turned off except when you are backing things up.

Joel

On Sun, Mar 07, 2004 at 08:38:47AM -0500, dep wrote:
> morning, gang!
> 
> i'm beginning a couple of fairly big projects and i've also had hardware 
> go south on me in recent weeks -- first, when the power supply blew up 
> first of the year; last week, when *two* 512-meg sdram simms failed 
> (under warranty, fortunately) -- and i now must realize that while 
> neither of these failures has cost me data, there are hardware failures 
> that could. and i simply cannot afford to have my stuff at the mercy of 
> a hard drive that might decide to blow up any old time.
> 
> used to be, we all had nice little consumer-level tape drives and would 
> back up from time to time -- i still have colorado t-1000 tapes full of 
> OS/2 stuff. but since going to linux, which is both reliable and which 
> last time i looked offered backup chiefly to tape drives that cost the 
> price of a used car, i've fallen way short. i *must* remedy this.
> 
> and i don't know where to begin. ideally, i'd back up daily to another 
> drive with an independent power supply -- or something like that. if 
> there are tape drives or similar that are not insanely expensive and 
> that have a decent capacity, that would be good to know. i do not want 
> to spend a thousand bucks here, but i also would be well and truly 
> screwed -- i mean lawyer-grade screwed -- if i lost my stuff.
> 
> advice? ideas? things to avoid? 
> 
> thanks.
> -- 
> dep
> 
> Hippocratic oath: An ethical construct whose initial tenet, "first, do 
> no harm," prohibits doctors from treating lawyers.
> 
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