Backup Ideas? (was Re: [geeks] Big Blue Smoke)

[Eric Dittman]

> This is something that's been niggling at my brain for sometime. My work
> machines have a nice proper backup plan in place - tested every so often
> - but at home I have my Sun Blade 100 with 55gb of disk, my Vaxstation
> 4000/90 with 5 gb of disk (and I hope soon to be 11 gb), and a Thinkpad
> 750 with a 1gb disk in it. None of them have _ever_ been backed up as
> there doesn't seem to be a sensible way to do this on a hobbyist budget.
> Is there something I missed or do I keep playing craps? In the long run
> there's nothing irreplaceable on these machines (the one thing that was
> I've already recreated by OCR more than once... ;').  

Well, you can get a DLT4000 and move it between systems.  The
cost is a little high to start, but in the long run you've
got reasonable storage.

I've got several different SCSI tape drives for reading
different media, but I use a DLT4700 tape library I got
cheap for my backups.  I bought a TLZ867 for $250 and
a DLT4000 for $250.  I replaced the TZ86 with the DLT4000
and put the TZ86 in an external case so I could read TK50
and TK70 tapes.  I got lucky and got ten DLTIV tapes for
free and I bought seven DLTIII+ tapes for $5 each.  I
also just bought a DLT2700 off eBay for $100, so I have
spares for the loader mechanism and power supply.

One of these days when DLT7000 drives get a little less
expensive I'll upgrade.
-- 
Eric Dittman
dittman at dittman.net
Check out the DEC Enthusiasts Club at http://www.dittman.net/