IDE tape backup?

[Sen7inel]

What would you suggest for a tape backup solution for Win 2000 Server, it should be very affordable and IDE. I've been considering Travan 5 drives like HP Colorado 20Gb. What other alternatives are there, or are these drives totally outdated?

 

[Pilot1]

I would stay away from Travan Drives. They are inherently slow, and could take hours to back up a large volume. If you could get a hold of a SCSI Card and a Tanberg SLR or Equivalent drive you would be in business. Our experience with the Tandberg drive has been spectacular!

 

[ShaithisDanoveur]

Personally I suggest avoiding cheap backup drives like the plague. They're slow, excruciatingly so if you have to do a system restore from one. And the high-end backup software often won't support the cheapies. Nothing worse than having a complete systems failure requiring you to restore from backups except having to wait for 12 hours of tape drive on top of it. This with the president or CEO coming in every 15 minutes wanting to know how much longer.

Grab yourself a decent SCSI adapter and a nice high speed AIT drive. Darn near as fast as some hard drives, totally reliable, quiet as a churchmouse.

Tapes are pricey, but if this data is important, it's worth it.

 

[CitrixEngineer]

If it's any help, I picked up an old Python DAT drive for £45 at Yahoo auctions. I then picked up a pack of 10 unused (shrinkwrapped) 4Gb DDS2 tapes for £20 and an Adaptec 1520 for £5.

This makes a complete SCSI-based backup package - which I run using Amanda on my Linux server (free software) to backup my entire home network (6 PCs). I get the lot on a single 4Gb DAT (with compression). Just because you've got a 20Gb drive doesn't necessarily mean you'll need a 20Gb backup solution.

Not bad for £70 ($100).

 

[ShaithisDanoveur]

DAT is definitely the way to go if you're on a budget. The tapes are cheap too. Not the fastest in the world but they're rock solid, and just about every server OS will accept DAT.