Backup options for home

[Jerry Feldman]

On 11/05/2008 10:05 AM, Dan Ritter wrote:
>
> 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.
>
>  =20
Good advice. I recently had a head crash on the HD containing my home=20
directories. I had been using tar to archive on the other drive.=20
However, my tar archive became corrupted by including a VDI file where I =

lost some of my directories. I since sent the bad drive out for=20
recovery, and I now do a nightly rsync to the new 255GB USB drive I=20
received with my recovered home directory.

Advantage to a USB HD: You can keep it plugged in and have the backup=20
run automatically.
Disadvantage: A lightning strike can damage anything physically attached =

to your computer which is one reason you may want to unplug it.

I suspect that prices of Blue Ray will drop and that could be a viable=20
periodic backup.

Another alternative is to use an online backup service. We've discussed=20
them here before.


--=20
Jerry Feldman <gaf-mNDKBlG2WHs at public.gmane.org>
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846