Mxsmanic wrote:
Over the past few years the capacity of disk drives (and the amount of
space typically used on them) has greatly increased, and now it is
getting more and more difficult to figure out how to back up these
drives.

What type of hardware (and software) do you use on your systems for
backup?

All backups, as well as shared files, are transfered to my linux server
with software RAID 1 (2x80 and 2x120). Further, I have a 200GB drive in
a 3.5" enclosure that I back up all this data onto for an 'off site'
backup one a month, minimum.


Up to now, I've used HP DDS tape drives (DAT drives) for backup. But
DDS2 is limited to 4 GB, and DDS3 is limited to 24 GB, and that's
getting to be to small to hold even one backup on a single tape (or
even on several tapes in some cases).

So, what else is there? These DAT drives already cost me a fortune in
the good old days, and today they cost nearly as much as the rest of
the computer, when I can find them ... and even DDS4 is still limited
to 40 GB. DLT drives are several times more expensive at the cheap
end, although they do have capacity to hold an entire drive of data.

Are there other practical alternatives? What about external USB
drives, can that work?

Yes. You can send entire ghost images to them or just create a backup
plan. I wonder if any of the commercial (or freeware) backup software
will let you set the USB HDD as a destination for the files, or if these
softwares are able to incrementally update onlt the files that are new
or have changed? I know there's a technique in linux to do this, and I
should REALLY look into it soon.

Old stuff like Zip drives and so on is
history, as it has even less capacity than tape. Archiving to CD or
DVD is also too low in capacity. It's getting to the point that the
only affordable option seems to be some sort of disk-to-disk copy (or
RAID for those who can afford it), but it would be nice to have
removable media that could be put in a safe place.

Even windows sofware RAID is quite cheap. Unlike hardware RAID, you need
to use the manufacturer's windows drivers.


So what is everyone else building into their new machines for backup?
And do you just use standard backup tools like ntbackup on Windows or
dump on UNIX, or do you use special software purchased separately?


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