Re: Cost of tape drives

Neil (you little stickler, you!),

In a message dated 98-01-19 21:25:43 EST, you write:

> Hmmm - your example of backing up a 4GB PC with a 1MB Zip drive would
>  certainly be a little difficult.  However, as a regular diskette holds
>  1.44MB I presume you meant a 1GB Zip drive ?   :-)

Yes, I meant Gb.  Still a pain in the kiester when a properly sized tape drive
will do the whole thing in the middle of the night without operator
intervention...

>  I wouldn't say a backup option was not viable simply because you would
>  have to change media 4 times to save the entire system.
>  And backing up a small AS/400 (4GB or 8GB) on the standard 1/4" tape
>  than can hold about 3.5GB also could not be classified as being not
>  viable.  Now if you wanted to add the word 'Unattended" to the backup
>  description, then I would have to agree.

The problem is, if the backup _isn't_ unattended, it often doesn't happen.
Heck, over the holidays we lost a week's worth of eight developers' work due
to a head crash on our development machine.  Someone had taken our source
library out of BRMS' save list because it "took too long to back up", DESPITE
the fact that the backup was unattended.  Duhhhhh!  Maybe it's slow because,
uh, THAT'S WHERE ALL THE STUFF _IS_!  Point being, backup needs to be
unattended in order for it to happen at all in a large number of cases.  Just
human nature and...

JMHO,

Dean Asmussen
Enterprise Systems Consulting, Inc.
Fuquay-Varina, NC  USA
E-Mail:  DAsmussen@aol.com

"A warm smile is the universal language of kindness." -- William Arthur Ward
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