Disk vs Tape backups

[Squires]

I came across this article recently:

Disk Backups

I've never had to extensive backing up myself. I've never used magnetic tape for storage. The stuff I've had to backup has always been small enough to fit on a Cd/DVD.

For those of you who have used different mediums, what do you think? Are hard drives becoming the best way to backup servers?

[zeroth]

Good article.

Most of us, like you, can use a CD to back up.

However, I use one of the methods mentioned in the article - using ¨someone elses¨ HD for a back up device. In my case, it's my HD in another computer on the network. I have a very large HD as a slave and save anything I create or modify there. It works great. For an example, I do periodic maintenance on my machines but have, at one time or another, had to do a complete reformat and reload because of a particularly nasty set of viruses. It's easy with my method (that computer doesn´t have any internet software). The stuff I really need is right there on my backup hard drive.

The article mentions fiber channel but that's expensive and only really needed in a corporate environment. A less-expensive, new alternative is iSCSI, which is being marketed right now. And I saw a 250 GB drive in Sams´s the other day for less than $100.

[Thong_Ispector]

I use both hard drives and dvd's.

Because HD's are a mechanical device I use them for daily backups but still do regular DVD burns.

Nero 6 does great multi DVD backup sets