[mythtv-users] Lost my OS hard drive (also ran)

[Brian Wood]

On Tuesday 15 September 2009 15:29:18 David Brodbeck wrote:
> Eric Sharkey wrote:
> > If you have two machines with significant local storage space, it's
> > not hard to have them rsync to each other.
> >
> > There are some nice easily customizable scripts at this site to help
> > set this up:
> >
> > http://www.math.ualberta.ca/imaging/rlbackup/
> >
> > You can use rsync's --link-dest option to efficiently store many
> > snapshots in time of another system.
>
> And if you want a really nice central backup system that uses rsync,
> check out BackupPC.

That sort of thing works, assuming the internet is up when you go to restore, 
if you're using a remote system.

In the "Old Days" we used tape or removable drive cartridges for backup, if 
the drive failed the media would simply be put into another drive.

But today tape systems with enough capacity to backup most people's data are 
out of reach economically for most home users.

Today the most economical way to back up is to another hard drive(s), whether 
that be local or somewhere out on the net.

It would be nice if terrabyte tape systems were affordable, but I suspect 
that's not going to happen, the large tape systems are used by large 
datacenters, which can afford them, and there may not be enough consumer 
interest in them to drive the price down. The fact that most tape systems now 
are still SCSI (or SAS), which indicates they are not targetted at home 
users.

Backing up to another hard drive merely postpones the inevitable, unless 
multiple drives are used, which of course suits the drive makers just fine.

More and more, RAID systems are being used as a substitute for backups, which 
is not what they are intended for, but it does, again,  increase drive sales.

I'm not sure what the best solution is, but many of them have been mentioned 
here.


-- 
Brian Wood
beww at beww.org