Back up And Archiving ....ideas

[aprilmarie]

Curious to hear what others use...
I am supposed to find some kind of external HD to back up on to along with Archiving to tape.
Currently were are using an old version of Retrospect to Travan tapes. Our daily back up is spilling on to 2 tapes and I can't get a whole reliable back up for when our ship goes down.

Any help appreciated

APRIl

[stargate]

Archive:
Retrospect to VXA X6 tapes for long term storage in OS X. One tape holds about 40GB uncompressed and it takes about hour and a half to write/verify. I write 2 tapes in case one of them is bad. Take a look how they test tapes here:

http://exabyte.com/technology/tested/index.cfm
I wouldn't trust any DDS, DLT, AIT or LTO tapes as I had bad unreadable tapes before. Since I switched to VXA 3 years ago. Never had a bad tape.

Backup:
For immediate backup I have exact clone of my File server running OS X Server that synchronize itself with my main server each night also using Retrospect. Each server has 6 320GB FireWire HD for job data and 500GB FW drive for ripped pages.

Have fun

[disbellj]

If looking at an external hard drive, I would look at the Seagate FreeAgent drives. I have two, and they are the only external hard drives I've found with a 5-year warranty.

Then it's just a matter of moving jobs to the backup external hard drive. Every time I get done with a job, I copy it to an external hard drive and a server share that gets archived to tapes. I don't depend on the tapes myself and rather like knowing I have my own external hard drive if the server and it's shares go down.

Don

[disbellj]

I've just gotten off using Retrospect myself, and believe me, you really can't take for granted that everything backed up and is restorable. Restore it on your new Seagate external HD just so all these old archives aren't stuck on just one backup medium.

And as far as the drives I've mentioned, I have two, so I can take one off-site if I choose and then bring back on-site to synchronize with the first external HD once a week.

Don

[abe@wedographics.com]

We do long term backup to two sets of LTO2 Tapes that are moved off-site. These tapes are never recycled/re-used.

We do short term backup to two different sets of hard drives (500 GB SATA2) in an eSATA enclosure. The sets alternate every other week and are recycled/re-used every other week. This gives us a minimum of 1 weeks worth of backups that are rapidly accessible.

We archive to DVD-R discs. We burn two copies of each disc. One copy is taken offsite for long term storage. The other copy is placed in DVD jukeboxes that are on a dedicated server. The jukeboxes are network accessible and appear like a large hard drive/volume to the end user. Each DVD is simply a folder in the volume. The volumes can be mounted from Mac OS X or Windows. The volumes are cataloged whenever new DVD-R discs are added.

We will switch from DVD-R to BluRay or HD-DVD as soon as either format wins.

Abe Hayhurst
Director of Color and Technology
We Do Graphics, Inc.

[Ddog]

Abe, What is the brand of DVD jukebox your using?

Thanks,

--tom

[stargate]

How many dvds do you have already in the juicebox and how much each gb dvd holds?

[aprilmarie]

I would like to be able to archive to blu-ray using some kind of catalog system AND be able to put that disk in another computer and see the files, copy to the desktop and use (if i had to). Is there anything like this? We have retrospect plus 80 travan archive tapes all cataloged. Problem is I can't find another compatible travan drive for Mac. I fear the one we have is snapping tapes we have. I would like to be able to retrieve these files often. i don't want to keep using these catalog type programs if I can't keep up with technology every 3-5 years. What if i can't find another reliable blu-ray reader by then? Some suggestions were CatFinder and CD Finder. Any experience here?

Thanks

[flybynitepress02]

We have been using CD Finder for about 8 years and have catalogued all of our jobs burnt to cd. CD finder is really great for this as it is like the "find" on your Mac. Punch in a job number or name and it will tell you the cd it was burnt on. All jobs when finished are put into an "archive" folder then burned on a cd or DVD now, then tell CD Finder to catalogue it which takes a few seconds and your done. We numbered all cd's when we burn them and file them away on a bookshelf in numerical order. I've got every customer file for the last 8 years. We should start to convert all of these discs to DVD's now and continue this system making a spare backup of each for storage off-site (which we never did before.) its simple and works well for us.

[PrePressTechie]

After using Tapes for Years and Years - I sacked them off after a Tape faile don me when I needed it.

Now I use Retrospect & back up my entire Networked Servers to 2x 2TB external HD... These are connected via Firewire 800 - and Mannn its fast.... Its also VERY fast to retrieve even if the files are huge... I backup Everynight and swap the two disks - one is kept in the Fire Safe.

Archiving - We Archive to DVD's 2 x copies One on Site One Off Site.... Catalogued in CD Finder - nice easy App... Works for us....

Although - ABE - How many DVD's does your jukebox hold???

Cheers

Pete