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I'm becoming less and less comfortable with hard drives as long-term backup media. The other day I plugged in my external to back up some family photos, but the

by chancho 17y ago

I'm becoming less and less comfortable with hard drives as long-term backup media. The other day I plugged in my external to back up some family photos, but the drive wasn't coming up and while I was investigating (this was Linux so it could have been any number of reasons) this faint noise was bugging the crap out of me. "What is that, a metronome?" It took a few minutes before the "oh shit" set in. Time machine is nice because its nearly impossible to remember to do backups regularly (unless it's your job) and the backups are highly available, but really its more like an extended trash bin, not an archive. Storing your backups on-site is one thing, but keeping them plugged in and mounted is just asking for it. Whatever happened to tapes? They're like comically expensive now. Another option is to copy your Time Machine out to S3 once a month. (Would probably take that long) but I don't know how you'd preserve the aliases / hard links.

karzeem 17y ago
I haven't used it myself, but I've heard good things about Backblaze. $5/month, you download a small piece of software that runs in the background and backs up your data to their servers.
byoung2 17y ago
This is a good option for backups to the cloud: http://tools.rackspacecloud.com/applications/jungle-disk/ http://tools.rackspacecloud.com/applications/jungle-disk/
- chancho 17y ago
  Hah I actually signed up for jungle disk after this happened. I like it so far but I don't think it solves the alias/hardlink problem, so you'd just get one or two good snapshots before it got to be really expensive. The great feature of time machine (or rsync --link-dest) is that your snapshots share storage of unchanged files, and I don't know how to make S3 do that.
tsally 17y ago
Just have two external hard drives. I have one at home I use daily, and then one I keep in my desk drawer at work I use weekly [1]. The chances of both failing at once are pretty unlikely. You could do the cloud, but I'm not comfortable having all my data in the could. If you have to use an external provider, use Rysnc [2] . They seem trustworthy [3]. [1] http://jwz.livejournal.com/801607.html http://jwz.livejournal.com/801607.html [2] http://rsync.net/ http://rsync.net/ [3] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=702247 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=702247
- MicahWedemeyer 17y ago
  Does it have to be "the cloud" as in S3? What about good old space on a traditional host? I have a Dreamhost account that claims to offer "unlimited" space for a flat monthly rate, and they support traditional *nix rsync/scp/etc. Seems like a good fit to me.
  - duskwuff 17y ago
    Unlimited space for web content. Backups don't count as web content, and will get you smacked down hard.
    - MicahWedemeyer 17y ago
      Very good to know :)
  - weaksauce 17y ago
    I have heard of Dreamhost accounts being disabled(I can not remember if they deleted the account too) for this. Edit: This was actually a reply to duskwuff's comment.
- sreitshamer 17y ago
  Uncomfortable with the cloud in general or with the current cloud-based offerings? I'm uncomfortable with Mozy, Backblaze, Carbonite because there's no way to verify they've encrypted my data, stored it redundantly, etc.
__david__ 17y ago
> Whatever happened to tapes? <Begin rant> Oh jeez. I worked at a company that made tape drives and you do not want to use tapes ever. They are the slowest, most unreliable thing imaginable. Especially now that they are making them more and more dense and the media is exposed to the elements (unlike a disk platter). Yeah, they use more redundant ECC than disks but I still wouldn't trust them at all. I had definitely drunk the kool-aid for a while and happily used tape for data transfer and not just backup. I can't tell you how many times I got stuck with a bad tape hours away (physically) from the original data, frustrated beyond belief. I firmly believe most people don't even know just how many of their tapes are corrupted because they've never tried to restore except for the initial testing period and the occasional file or two. Tape sucks. Tape is dead. Long live disks. <end rant> > Another option is to copy your Time Machine out to S3 once a month. (Would probably take that long) but I don't know how you'd preserve the aliases / hard links. One of the interesting things about time machine is how it deals with network backups. It creates an HFS+ disk image on the remote machine and then mounts that and does the backup to it instead of directly to the remote volume. It uses the "sparse bundle" style disk image which partitions the disk image into a bunch of 8mb slices. So you could rsync those slices to S3 daily or monthly or whatever and not worry about the format details at all.
whatusername 17y ago
Tapes are still probably viable - but only at the high end.. Slap a SL8500 / TS3500 with Lots of LTO4 drives hundreds of tapes and the cost / GB starts coming down. (esp if you look at things like cooling, power, etc (High End storage like a Symm can power drives down, but their not exactly cheap - or really needed for backups)).

by chancho 17y ago

karzeem 17y ago

I haven't used it myself, but I've heard good things about Backblaze. $5/month, you download a small piece of software that runs in the background and backs up your data to their servers.

byoung2 17y ago

This is a good option for backups to the cloud: http://tools.rackspacecloud.com/applications/jungle-disk/ http://tools.rackspacecloud.com/applications/jungle-disk/

chancho 17y ago
Hah I actually signed up for jungle disk after this happened. I like it so far but I don't think it solves the alias/hardlink problem, so you'd just get one or two good snapshots before it got to be really expensive. The great feature of time machine (or rsync --link-dest) is that your snapshots share storage of unchanged files, and I don't know how to make S3 do that.

tsally 17y ago

Just have two external hard drives. I have one at home I use daily, and then one I keep in my desk drawer at work I use weekly [1]. The chances of both failing at once are pretty unlikely. You could do the cloud, but I'm not comfortable having all my data in the could. If you have to use an external provider, use Rysnc [2] . They seem trustworthy [3]. [1] http://jwz.livejournal.com/801607.html http://jwz.livejournal.com/801607.html [2] http://rsync.net/ http://rsync.net/ [3] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=702247 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=702247

MicahWedemeyer 17y ago
Does it have to be "the cloud" as in S3? What about good old space on a traditional host? I have a Dreamhost account that claims to offer "unlimited" space for a flat monthly rate, and they support traditional *nix rsync/scp/etc. Seems like a good fit to me.
- duskwuff 17y ago
  Unlimited space for web content. Backups don't count as web content, and will get you smacked down hard.
  - MicahWedemeyer 17y ago
    Very good to know :)
- weaksauce 17y ago
  I have heard of Dreamhost accounts being disabled(I can not remember if they deleted the account too) for this. Edit: This was actually a reply to duskwuff's comment.
sreitshamer 17y ago
Uncomfortable with the cloud in general or with the current cloud-based offerings? I'm uncomfortable with Mozy, Backblaze, Carbonite because there's no way to verify they've encrypted my data, stored it redundantly, etc.

__david__ 17y ago

> Whatever happened to tapes? <Begin rant> Oh jeez. I worked at a company that made tape drives and you do not want to use tapes ever. They are the slowest, most unreliable thing imaginable. Especially now that they are making them more and more dense and the media is exposed to the elements (unlike a disk platter). Yeah, they use more redundant ECC than disks but I still wouldn't trust them at all. I had definitely drunk the kool-aid for a while and happily used tape for data transfer and not just backup. I can't tell you how many times I got stuck with a bad tape hours away (physically) from the original data, frustrated beyond belief. I firmly believe most people don't even know just how many of their tapes are corrupted because they've never tried to restore except for the initial testing period and the occasional file or two. Tape sucks. Tape is dead. Long live disks. <end rant> > Another option is to copy your Time Machine out to S3 once a month. (Would probably take that long) but I don't know how you'd preserve the aliases / hard links. One of the interesting things about time machine is how it deals with network backups. It creates an HFS+ disk image on the remote machine and then mounts that and does the backup to it instead of directly to the remote volume. It uses the "sparse bundle" style disk image which partitions the disk image into a bunch of 8mb slices. So you could rsync those slices to S3 daily or monthly or whatever and not worry about the format details at all.

whatusername 17y ago

Tapes are still probably viable - but only at the high end.. Slap a SL8500 / TS3500 with Lots of LTO4 drives hundreds of tapes and the cost / GB starts coming down. (esp if you look at things like cooling, power, etc (High End storage like a Symm can power drives down, but their not exactly cheap - or really needed for backups)).