[rescue] Backups

[Geoffrey S. Mendelson]

On Wed, Jun 15, 2005 at 11:05:13AM -0500, Mike Hebel wrote:
> I'm well aware of this however for proper streaming to the DVD-R/CD-R to
> occur there has to be a number of things besides the burner configured
> correctly.

I've burned hundreds of DVDs on her computer and have had only one or
two coasters that were not my fault. If you are that concerned with
readability, NERO has a verify option, GHOST has a check the checksum.

When I burn a DVD with NERO, I check the verify option and go away for
an hour. When I come back I have a 4.5 gig DVD ready to file away.

> Then there's the whole "backround services" issue.  For instance I've run
> into occasions where having Direct CD installed causes burns to fail
> because something on the bus and in the software won't leave the burner
> alone during the burn.  And if you've got spyware, by some random chance,
> you can probably forget about having a quiet enough system to do a good
> backup on a burner.  When it comes down to it a burner uses up much mroe
> system resources than a dedicated tape drive.  (This is not counting SCSI
> burners obviously.  The SCSI controller buffers a lot of stuff for you.)

That's a whole 'nother issue. I would never haver Direct CD on any computer
I control, I have a current antivirus and Microsoft Anti Spyware installed.
T


> Your experiences may be different but I personally do not consider
> DVD-R/CD-R to be a good backup solution.  They're slower than a properly
> configured tape drive and on top of that the media only lasts ten years or
> so per current technology research.  I know people that have DLTs and DEC
> style tape that is still good after more than a decade - and will probably
> still be good a decade later.

Some peole just can't afford anything else, if you are so rich, care to
buy me a drive and a dozen tapes. I'll even trade you two dead DDS-3
drives and about 30 unused tapes. :-)

Geoff.

-- 
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm at mendelson.com  N3OWJ/4X1GM
IL Voice: (077)-424-1667  IL Fax: 972-2-648-1443 U.S. Voice: 1-215-821-1838 
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See U.S. patent applications  20050108591,  20050107165.