Very Computer

Hi,

I like to play with my linux box a little too much.  I've reinstalled
it four time in the last 8 months.  Now I've made up my mind to get a
tape drive in order to back up my system.  I've looked over the faqs but
you folks who have done this before are the true experts.  I'm looking
for recommendations as to which tape drive I should purchase.  I'm also
intereseted in how hard the process of backing up the system really is.
And finally I'm interested as to what programs I should use to
facilitate the this.  I've heard and read about ftape.  I think its
probably pretty much the standard.  I've also heard of a program called
taper.  However, I think taper is still in beta.  Any help or
suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Scott Gray

: for recommendations as to which tape drive I should purchase.  I'm also
: intereseted in how hard the process of backing up the system really is.
: And finally I'm interested as to what programs I should use to
: facilitate the this.  I've heard and read about ftape.  I think its

Well, I guess it depends exactly what you want to do for backups...
Personally, I have a HP Surestore 6000 (4Gb Native, 8Gb Compressed),
SCSI-2 DAT drive...  Backing up things is basically tarring any
appropriate files/directories to the tape, REALLY easy.

good luck. 8)

--
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Theo Van Dinter                          www: http://www.kluge.net/~felicity/
Vice-President WPI Lens and Lights           Active Member in SocComm and ACM

                        CHR$(32) - the Final Frontier.
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: Hi,
:
[wants to get tape backup, looking for suggestions]
: intereseted in how hard the process of backing up the system really is.
: And finally I'm interested as to what programs I should use to
: facilitate the this.  I've heard and read about ftape.  I think its
: probably pretty much the standard.  I've also heard of a program called

ftape is, i believe, just the driver to access tape drives on the floppy
controller.  You don't need it if you use a SCSI tape drive.  In either
case, the easiest way to backup is to tar your system to the tape drive
device.  Really easy.  If you want to do incremental backups, you have to
look more carefully at the tar man page, but it is supported.

If you are going to be backing up a lot, I would suggest a SCSI DAT drive.
If you don't mind doing unattended backups, a smaller floppy tape drive
would suffice.  Another option you might consider is a Jaz drive.  If your
drive, when compressed, can fit on a 1021 MB drive, it would be very fast,
and the drive could be used for other things, though the cartriges are
expensive.  I would be careful, however, the Jaz drives haven't been around
long enough for me to judge their reliability.

Evan Jeffrey

Evan Jeffrey