On 17 Jul 2002, Nathan Mueller wrote:
> I know it's hard to believe, but we're actually saving money dumping to
> disk. We needed a new system and the decision of tape vs disk was made
> based on cost alone.
It's easy to believe you're saving money; the question is, how far are
your backup disks from the machine they're backing up? Some people have
a requirement for off-site backups so that they they still have their
data if their building burns down.
However, you're right that disk has many advantages. A big one is speed.
You can do the backups themselves much faster and even skip the verify
pass (if you're using tape, you really should be verifying you can read
every single one you write), and you can restore a lot faster, too. When
I've got the money, I keep a week's worth of backup on disk at the site,
and use tapes only for retreiving stuff older than that and for off-site
backups.
cjs
--
Curt Sampson <cjs@cynic.net> +81 90 7737 2974 http://www.netbsd.org
Don't you know, in this new Dark Age, we're all light. --XTC