Data Recovery or Destruction - Don't do this at Home!!

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andyP · #1 Post by **andyP** » Thu May 24, 2007 4:16 am

Found this on the BBC:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6677235.stm

It's made me think a little about which medium is the best for storing important data. I've always used notebook HDDs and it may now be the time to change

Temetka · #2 Post by **Temetka** » Thu May 24, 2007 5:19 pm

Optical or MO drives are best for storing truly crucial data.

#3 Post by **gator** » Thu May 24, 2007 5:28 pm

Temetka wrote:Optical or MO drives are best for storing truly crucial data.

I thought tape was better than optical ... am I wrong?

Turbo Audi · #4 Post by **Turbo Audi** » Thu May 24, 2007 6:21 pm

I have all my stuff backed up on 3 different HDDs. Works for me.

#5 Post by **rkawakami** » Thu May 24, 2007 7:39 pm

gator wrote:I thought tape was better than optical ... am I wrong?

My most extensive experience with tape are the old 9-track reel-to-reel spools. With age they are brittle, easily damaged by mis-aligned tape drives and have print-through problems. I've been using DDS-3 tapes to backup a couple of Sun Ultra 5 systems for the last several years. I've only had to restore one accidentally deleted file from a tape and it went off without any problems. Don't know the long-term storage life of these newer digital tapes but I would think that they should be better than their older cousins. I believe that the usable lifespan of writable optical disk is still many, many, decades.

The main problem with tape vs. disk is the linear access. It took about 30 minutes to restore the file from the backup tape. If I had a mountable disk drive it probably would have taken 1/10 the time.

#6 Post by **jdhurst** » Thu May 24, 2007 7:45 pm

In my opinion, the best storage device is a high-quality, working hard drive which is then back up by optical or tape. I don't trust the longevity of optical at this point, whereas I keep my computers current and move critical data to new hard drives relatively frequently. I think a small SAN is in my future, but I have not had time to think it through and do it. ... JDH

#7 Post by **rkawakami** » Thu May 24, 2007 8:07 pm

jdhurst wrote:I think a small SAN is in my future, but I have not had time to think it through and do it.

Which reminds me... I have a NAS setup which isn't being used too much anymore, mainly because of some driver issues. About two years ago I purchased and installed a Ximeta 160GB (I think) NetDisk on my network. It works fine with the exception of the laptops not being able to enter hibernation mode while logged into the network drive. Maybe Ximeta has fix this. Time to poke around for software updates...

Data Recovery or Destruction - Don't do this at Home!!

Data Recovery or Destruction - Don't do this at Home!!

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