Backup options for home

[jbk]

>>
>> One way to mitigate that disadvantage is to use two hard drives, and
>> alternate them each night.  You still get a nightly backup, but if there
>> is physical damage due to lightning or severe power surge the
>> non-connected one is safe.  Additionally, you get a bit of historical
>> fallback if you develop corruption you don't catch immediately.
>>
>> That's my plan for the desktop machine.  The home server will be backed
>> up to a second machine (both with RAID-1) if I can ever get off my
>> tuchus and rebuild the thing.
>>
> I mentioned lightning because that is one of the few ways that a 
> simultaneous HD failure is most likely to occur. It is unlikely that 2 
> hard drives will fail simultaneously. A major power surge or lightning 
> strike is one way that could fry everything in the machine. A USB drive 
> is not immune, but the power circuit or cable could fail before the drive.
> 
> But, in my opinion having an automatic nightly backup without having to 
> remember to put a tape or DVD in place is very important. I can't count 
> the number of times at work where we ran off the end of the backup tape 
> because an engineer forgot to change the tapes. Usually he would get 
> email that the backup failed. So, I personally prefer an always online 
> media. If I can remember to unplug the USB and plug it back in, I 
> mitigate the lightning. And, of course a periodic backup to a more long 
> term storage solution like DVD or Blue Ray.
> 
> 
I use 4 60g usb drives that I rotate weekly and Backuppc to 
manage the backups. Once the software is setup which was a 
bear I have had reliable backups for 3 computers. The usb 
drives I got on sale for $60 each. The through put is now 
6mb/sec, if you compile Perl yourself you can get 25mb/sec.
Not that this addresses the original post, but, automating 
backups makes them more likely to happen.

Jim