On Mon, Jun 11, 2007 at 12:25:49PM +0200, Mitja Podreka wrote: > Ron Johnson wrote: > >On 06/11/07 04:40, Mitja Podreka wrote: > >>Douglas Allan Tutty wrote:
> >>>If you have a spare computer, backup to that. This could be your > >>>workstation. Add a drive or two (for raid1 there). Have it on a > >>>separate power supply/UPS/whatever. > >>> > >>You mean separate power supply for additional drive(s)? Is it to > >>switch it off after backup is finished? No, I mean that if you use a separate computer that it be plugged into a separate circuit via a separate panel on a UPS separate from the computer that you are backing up. > >>>Then, external USB makes sense. Get three: one hot, one on-site cold, > >>>one off-site cold for disaster. Have you found an external USB drive > >>>that takes 270 GB or will you have multiple drives and use your backup > >>>software for volume management? > >>> > >>I found an external USB drive with 320GB. I was thinking to buy one > >>for beginning. But now I might buy more. > > > >Don't buy a "prepackaged" external drive! > > > >Buy the enclosure and drive separately. You'll save money and can > >choose the optimum sized drive for your needs. > > For single drives, look at addonics Jupiter (for 2.5" laptop drives) or Saturn (for 3.5" drives). The Jupiter has some shock-absorbing so that the drive is supposed to withstand a 1 m drop. Useful for off-site backup to a bank's safety deposit box. If you don't need the off-site, they also make different enclosures with various adapter cards. E.g. a 5-bay enclosure with its own power supply and hardware raid controller that will look to your computer like one big drive. A neat thing about the addonics is that they will connect to SATA, eSATA, USB, FireWire, or IDE just by changing the cable. I haven't used them but when I'm ready for external (non-CD) backup that's likely what I'll do. > >If you are doing backups for many faculty, a multi-drive FireWire 800 > >enclosure filled with 750GB drives might be what you need, instead. > I don't need a big solution, although it might be used also for other's > faculty needs. I'm in charge just of one server since our IT guys have > no idea of Linux. > How much backup space do I need for 270 GB of disk space? > It depends on how compressable the backup is and what compression algorithm you use. gzip is relatively fast and pretty good. Bzip2 is far slower but compresses a bit more. You'd have to try both and compare time-to-complete and size of archives produced. As for the size of drive to buy, find the sweet spot. (Drive + enclosure) / GB. My guess is that it will likely be cheapest at around 500 GB for a 3.5" drive and a bit smaller and more money for 2.5" drives. The smaller physical size only matters if your storage space is constrained. If you're going with a fixed multi-drive enclosure you'll probably use 3.5". Something to consider: The price of an external multi-drive enclosure with cables would probably cost more than an old spare computer (PII?) plus a decent PCI ethernet card. I did that with my 486 but with ISA it only does 10-T ethernet. Poke around the school. You may be surprised what old computers are around that work perfectly for what you want. Doug. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
