Re: Help w/ offsite backups

[MacWheel99@xxxxxxx]

Well be happy someone is pushing this ... it is something I pushed for 
decades at past employers who eventually grudgingly agreed to the concept & 
along the way I have learned several gotchas.

If you gonna store the media in same building as computer, it is a good idea 
to have some distance from computer ... suppose there is a small fire, or a 
vehicle crashes into the building ... do you want all your assets & all your 
backups stored physically within a few feet of each other?

I worked one place with removable disk packs.
Off site people dropped them.

We usually end up with some employee who takes the media home.
That person needs to be a computer-knowlegeable person.
Otherwise the media will sit on vehicle dash board in full sunlight, or in 
trunk of car overnight in winter & you never able to explain to the people 
why not do that.

Before I was weaned off diskettes, we used diskette magazines in big plastic 
cases with 50 diskettes to a case.  We discovered that in Winter Time if you 
slip on the Ice and fall face first into a snow bank while carrying these 
things, between car & office, the ice & snow is driven into the diskette 
magazines under tremendous pressure, even though they appear to be sealed 
cases.

If you going to send the media by some common carrier, use some common sense 
with the packaging.  How does magnetic media come to you when you order it 
from some computer place?  A lot of them do not use common sense.  Talk to 
the common carriers - tell them you sending magnetic media with computer 
infomation stored ... how would they reccommend packaging to protect against 
the stuff going through X-Ray machine at airport (it isn't the X-Rays that 
kills, but the magnetic coils - just like if you lean a diskette against a 
telephone, no harm until the phone rings.

If the temperature is comfortable for humans, it is comfortable for the 
media, but how will it be stored when in transit?

You can have a real problem crossing international boundaries.
You do not want to be paying customs each way.
Look for delivery points at each end that are in trade free zones.

Take another look at
http://www.TechRepublic.com/forumdiscuss/thread_detail.jhtml?thread_id=17159


MacWheel99@aol.com (Alister Wm Macintyre) (Al Mac)

D.BALE@handleman.com writes:

> The auditors are beating their drums around here and have decided to 
> implement
>  a requirement for off-site backup for our branch AS/400s.  This is coming 
to
>  me second-hand, so I don't know the specifics, except that we are now
>  requiring our branches to send to us (at corporate) via 2-day express mail 
> the
>  backup tapes (cartidges) from the Thursday night backups.  We will have a
>  3-week cycle of tapes.  Week 1 arrives, we send back week 3.  Week 2 
arrives,
> 
>  we send back week 1.  Week 3 arrives, we send back week 2.  This is a
>  quick-to-implement, temporary plan to satisfy the auditors immediately; in 
> the
>  near future, we will be looking at off-site storage services local to the
>  branch, as well as on-site safe storage, among other options.  So 
pleeezze, 
> no
>  lectures on all the shortcomings of this plan.  We know the shortcomings -
>  'nuff said.
>  
>  Questions:
>  How should we go about *safely* packaging this media?
>  Someone brought up the concern of stray magnetic waves that could hit the
>  media between point A and point B, effectively destroying the data.  Is 
this 
> a
>  real concern?  If so, how does one effectively protect magnetic media when
>  shipping it?
>  Anybody know of import/export rules for this type of material for Mexico,
>  Canada, and the U.K.?
>  Anybody doing this recommend (or not) any particular delivery service 
> company?
>  
>  TIA.
>  
>  - Dan
>  Dan Bale says "Ban Dale!"
>  IT - AS/400
>  Handleman Company
>  248-362-4400  Ext. 4952
>  D.Bale@Handleman.com
>    Quiquid latine dictum sit altum viditur.
>    (Whatever is said in Latin seems profound.)



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