RE: newer backup methods was: Accidentally Lost Data

V-tape: If you used virtual tape for your saves, you'd need to move them
to a network drive somewhere.  If you want to use them to recover the
iSeries it's kinda useless if they're still on the iSeries needing
recovery.  So you need another server (SAN/NAS count as 'servers') and
the associated expense.  If you go to the expense to build that
infrastructure, I'd suspect the restore process would be similar to what
happens for Windows today: Load the base OS from media, configure the
connection to the network share, copy the data over and restore from
that or restore directly 'over the wire'.  Effort-wise it's probably not
too bad but I'd hazard a guess a D IPL is simpler.


Vista: A USB drive is a USB drive.  Why should it matter at all if the
drive is solid state or platter-based?  Either way you can partition
them, format as FAT32 or NTFS, and do whatever else you'd care to do.

16GB Flash drives are out and are under $150 (
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233042 ).
That's plenty for a modest OS + apps + My Documents set up.  Or just My
Docs for incremental/differential backups.

I'm not trying to argue here; you may well be right about MS' approach.
IMO, though, there's no functional difference and MS shouldn't be
dictating what storage media customers use.