Backup Options

[Shad]

right

i have 200GB on my comp as it stands now, im planning on getting an extra 300GB drive and setting up a new PC acting as a server. but i need some kinda option for backing up certain stuff that i have gathered since 1998. i think ill be using around 400BG actually in use by partitioning drives for different things, pics, music, movies, all that kinda thing, which leaves me 100GB spare. so teh server will be made up of 500GB comprising of a 200 and a 300 drive.

Can anyone suggest a gd backup suggestion, i thought about mirroring drives but that means ill need to buy another drive. I could use CDs but dunno how good compression is. I was thinking of trying to get away with using my 300GB to hold all my data and then use my 200GB as a selective backup drive. but has anyone else got other suggestions

 

[Nodsu]

With such amounts of data, the only reasonable options are RAIDed hard drives, tape or DVD-recordables.

Conpression depends on what kind of data you have. Already compressed stuff like JPEG pictures, MP3 music and video files are virtually uncompressable. If you have text files, uncompressed images (BMP), uncompressed music (WAV) and such, then those can go down to 20% of the original size.

If the content doesn't change (it probably doesn't, since you say you have that stuff since 1998), then the cheapest/simplest way is to burn it to DVDs. A couple of dozen of DVD is not that difficult to burn and manage. Just make sure you test and/or re-burn the data every couple of years.

Tape is easy and reliable, but you'd have to pay a lot for the drive and the tape itself, plus you'd probably need a SCSI controller. And if you only need to write that data once, then the investment would be a bit silly.

RAIDed hard drives are nice, but you have to keep then in a running computer, hoping that no one overwrites the data and that in case of a controller failure, the drives are usable connected to another computer.