Practicality of backing up huge hard drives (was Re:[mythtv-users] Dieing Hard Drive)

[William]

> 
> On Tue, 2005-03-15 at 07:42 -0500, William wrote:
> > > You got any good ideas on how to back up, for example, a 2/3
> > > full 250GB HDD?
> > > 
> > 
> > Tape drives have gotten quite reasonable these days.
> 
> You're kidding, right?  High-capacity tape drives cost 
> thousands of dollars. 
> http://www.nextag.com/buyer/outpdir.jsp?nxtg=3b085_223EE3C7D6A
FA1B5&search=ultrium+tape+drive

Yes you are right for high capacity systems designed for commercial
applications. However the older tape systems can still be gotten for under
$100 and tapes are cheap. Personally I use DVD-R discs that I buy for about
$0.35 each. Its not ideal in that they are not reusable and there is no way
to automate the backup but they get the job done cheap.