[mythtv-users] Options for Backing up Myth data

[Greg Oliver]

On Mon, Dec 6, 2010 at 1:39 PM, Another Sillyname
<anothersname at googlemail.com> wrote:
> On 6 December 2010 19:06, Brian Wood <beww at beww.org> wrote:
>> Wow, the "2 TB Hard Drive Recommendations" thread has got pretty long,
>> and seems to be drifting towards backup solutions, so I thought I'd
>> start a new better-named one.
>>
>> The DLTs I use are not terribly practical for most folks, and even I'd
>> like to find something better, in case my media source dries up.
>>
>> Somewhat related to something I asked a few weeks ago:
>>
>> What about using Blu-Ray disks for backup?
>>
>> BR recorders are getting below $100 (though probably not in NZ yet), and
>> the media is starting to get more realistic.
>>
>> Granted optical media has some problems, but in the case of video files,
>> may be "good enough". I could put up with an occasional dropout, or even
>> a lost program, and could of course make two or even three backups of
>> really important programming (if there is such a thing).
>>
>> Except for using hard drives, I'm not aware of any other storage
>> solution that can store 50GB for a dollar or two.
>>
>> Are BRs "better" than using hard drives for backup, and if so, why or
>> why not?
>>
>> I think Myth systems want two different types of backup, the programming
>> itself, and the other bits of the system needed to restore the system to
>> a working condition in the event of some sort of catastrophe.
>>
>> Thoughts?
>
> A dollar or two?  If you can source BR Media for a dollar or two
> congrats, in the UK I still have never found media for less the £6 for
> a 25gb Disk (and I gave up even looking a while back now).  By far and
> away the most cost effective way to back up your data is buy a 1TB
> plus hard drive and dump the data onto it.  I run a Raid6 setup and
> realised a long time back there are few, if any, effective backup
> strategies that work once you start to look into the multi TB storage
> range notwithstanding the storage issues it physically takes more then
> 24hours to back up all my library.

I just got a BD burner and 20 single layer discs for $110 at newegg
last week.  I have not installed or used it yet, but I got it to
archive my camcorder's recordings.  I'm not a big fan or archiving to
optical due to the need to swap media and the inability for reliable
incrementals..  (Back to the 2TB drive topic) - I bought 9 of the
Hitachis that Fry's has had on sale for ~$95 for 3 or 4 months, and
have had 0 issues with those.  I carved out a 4TB array that I only
mount r/w when I am backing up to it.  I do not backup A/V media, but
do have many virtual machines for work that just take too long to
re-provision, so I back them up as well as the configs from all
machines/docs, etc...

> I do backup chunks every month or so and keep the other drives offsite
> so I'll never have a totally destructive failure, however a day to day
> strategy would frankly just work out either too expensive or too
> labour intensive to be practicable.  RAID6 with a hot spare minimises
> the risk factors and that's sufficient for me.
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