Backups was Restoring MBR - Solved

[Steve Seremeth]

Rich Braun wrote:

>A disk drive can't compare to a tape autoloader, you're comparing apples to
>oranges.  (You could compare a tape autoloader to a rack of disk drives
>mounted in those removable slide-rail thingies that alas aren't cheap enough.)
>
>You need at least two disk drives (in external enclosures or slide mounts) in
>order to accomplish a reasonable backup rotation, IMHO.  So 2 times $70
>(assuming you can find an external at that price, generally I see them at $100
>or so) can be compared to an internal-mount AIT drive (about $80 to $100 on
>eBay) plus 2 to 5 blank tapes.
>
>Hence the low-budget AIT solutions that I've implemented cost about $100, not
>$1000.  The bigger-budget ones (based on autoloaders so you don't have to
>touch them for a month at a time) cost about $500.
>
>My argument is simply that hard-drive backups aren't as cheap as they seem,
>and they are a lot less flexible in terms of media rotation because the
>incremental dollars-per-gig in the archive is a lot higher.  But they do make
>sense if your needs differ from mine (perhaps you need to keep a lot of
>incremental dumps and recover data a lot more frequently than I do, and rotate
>off-site a lot less frequently.)
>
>But I've said all this before:  go read the BLU archives.
>
>-rich
>  
>
If you have an off-site location to plug in an external drive that is 
decently connected to the 'net and secure, the disk solution seems 
cheap, easy, and somewhat reliable.  It's working for me -- By the time 
I stuffed my 250GB 7200 RPM drive in an external case, I probably only 
paid about $120. 

If I want to, I can take that drive (almost) anywhere and plug it in to 
access it's contents or get to it from the internet over an ssh tunnel.  
I can't do those things with tape unless I have a tape drive (robot 
really) at my off-site storage location.  I would say the tape solution 
is slightly more reliable and expensive; a LOT more manual and your data 
becomes less accessible.  In my mind the pros of the HDD solution pretty 
easily outweigh the very few cons.  We have reached the beautiful age 
where disk is cheap (I try to pay $.50 or less per GB of reusable HDD 
storage), which is why many big companies are starting to use SATA 
arrays for backups instead of tape.

Steve