Backup options for home

[Dan Ritter]

On Wed, Nov 05, 2008 at 09:32:39AM -0500, Scott R. Ehrlich wrote:
> I'm looking for relatively cheap nonmechanical means to backup up data 
> from my home Linux box.
> 
> I've been pricing 16GB Compact Flash and SDIO cards.  I'd store a 
> collection of MP3s on one, and the rest of my data on another.

On paper, this is a great idea. MTBF for flash devices is a
million hours or more.

In practice, this sucks rocks. I have a collection of dead CF,
SD and USB sticks. 

> I've ot my eye on a TransCend 16GB CF card (TS16GCF133) and a Transcend 16 
> GB SDHC memory card (TS16GSDHC6-s5w).   Some manufacturers boast Toshiba 
> or Samsung memory.   How much does that really play a role, and are their 
> prices relevent, or is it just marketing?

Toshiba and Samsung are the two largest manufacturers. Not
relevant.


> What are people's experiences with using CF and SD cards for data 
> preservation on the cheap?  What is the average data storage life 
> expectency for solid state devices, such as CF and SD cards, vs their 
> mechanical equivalents?

You've actually got four major technologies: mag disk, mag tape,
optical disk, NAND flash.


Cost per gigabyte at NewEgg:
- DVD+R: 	3-4 cents (4.7GB/20c)
- hard disk: 	10 cents (750GB/$82)
- magtape: 	10 cents (800GB/$80)  + drive
- flash: 	$1.80  (16GB/$29)
- BlueRay: 	$3 (25GB/$8)

If you have less than, say, 10 DVDs of stuff, do that. You
probably already have a DVD burner, and it will take a while,
but it's pretty reliable and very cheap.

If you have more than 50GB, buy an external disk enclosure and a spare
disk. rsync your filesystem over every so often. Unmount the disk and
unplug it between rsyncs. Once a year, rotate your backup into
archival storage, your primary into backup, and buy a new
primary.

-dsr-

-- 
http://tao.merseine.nu/~dsr/eula.html is hereby incorporated by reference.

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