Gerhard Fiedler wrote:
> The standard solution is to have the important data in a version control
> system and do regular commits. It's a manual process, though, and depends
> on you actually doing it. And doesn't help for an obscure configuration
> file in an application's installation directory.

Yeah, we do that for source code and stuff. I got into the habit of 
committing in small chunks, it makes documenting the changes so much easier.

> Oh, yes, do that. I tried to fiddle with tapes for years, and gave up a 
> few
> years ago. When you can get a 500GB disk for $100something, and external
> (SATA or USB2) disk cases for less than $100, it's just so easy to keep
> backups on disk, and even do the offsite rotation with disks. (And it's
> probably cheaper than with tapes.) It's been a while that I needed to go
> into my backups, but it's very quick to mount a TrueImage backup from a
> network disk as a drive and copy out the file. And a big advantage is also
> that you gain a lot of flexibility in setting up your backup policy (for
> example hourly incremental backups). No tape changing anymore; it can now
> really be automated.

So, how many drives do you keep around? And what exactly is your backup 
procedure? Do you back up only the incremental changes to a single 500GB 
drive?

It seems to me that a hybrid system (drives for short-term stuff, tapes for 
long term) is the best solution, from POV of cost/reliability/simplicity.

Vitaliy


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