Re: LS120 Capacity - Is 122880 the correct capacity for Tar Backup ?

The message <aodk53-ec2.ln1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
from markhobley@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Mark Hobley) contains these words:

> Johnny B Good <jcs.computers***@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> > Yeahbut, some things deserve to die. I'm afraid to say that the LS120
> > was one of those. :-(
> >
> > The reliabilty of LS120, ime, was crap. The read/write speed was only a
> > quarter of the competing ZIP100 drives

> I don't like zip disks because they don't have a write-protect tab.

Ah, so you're concerned that they might get accidently 'recycled'

> > However, it was too little too late (as was the ZIP750), since CDRW
> > drives had started to become affordable and offered better reliability
> > and performance as well as dirt cheap media (if you stuck with CDR
> > rather than waste time with CDRW media

> I've got a CD Rewriter, but I never managed to obtain any rewritable
> media for
> it, so the drive has never been used. CDRW disks are expensive.

They're a lot cheaper now, although the CDR media is cheaper again as
well as faster (although CDRW media is, presumably, available at speed
ratings up to 24 speed)

> > - In practice, almost all
> > floppies and ZIP tapes were used as archival storage anyway.).

> I use them for backups.

By that, am I to assume you mean you rotate the media in a
"Grandfather, Father, Son" cycle of usage? Presumably you wouldn't want
to be caught out by a forgotten write protect tab setting. :-)

My origional intention, when I used 4GB DAT backups years ago to keep
backups of the file server and my PC, was to organise such a three
generation rotation of the media. I never did rotate the media since I
simply kept buying extra tapes to add to the generations and gave up
tape backup altogether when the accumulating data on successively larger
drive upgrades overwhelmed the capability of the tape system. I think I
might have some 6 or 7 generations of backups 'archived' to tape by now.

Unfortunately, Tape streamer backup drives to match the several hundred
gigabyte capacities of modern multimedia PC systems are far too
expensive (several times the price of the protected system!) for most
users to afford for their relatively short term useful life in the face
of ever increasing capacity.

I use DVR to make archival type backups since the DVR disks are cheaper
and faster than the DVRW media (and considerably cheaper than any tape
equivilent).

The most affordable form of backup is either external hard drives or a
linux based server with suitably large disk drives to let you at least
mirror the data plus boot drive image backups copied to bootable CD or
DVD media (or the second disk drive in the system if it is so blessed
_and_ backups to CDR or DVR media).

In short, the cheapest backup solution involves the use of an extra set
of hard disk drives in one configuration or another supplemented by
archival style backups of critical data to CDR or DVR media.

--
Regards, John.

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