On Tue, May 17, 2005 at 12:54:38PM +0200, Cedric BRINER wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm currently using HD as tape. But this HD are spread around all my boxes: 
> One by workstation and they are always connected.
> 
> I was thinking to use removable HD that I can hot un/pluged, and to place 
> them in a safe.
> 
> 
> Does the HD technology allow such kind of use:
> - one day of use
> - unmountig it
> - keeping it disconnected for a 2 month in a safe (like backup's tape)
> - remountig it
> ..
> I heard that HD's has to be maintained connected to the power, because they 
> have some auto discover/repairing error.
> 

There are several possibilities I can imagine.

- lots of raid or jbod devices allow hot plug/unplug capability for HD
- USB or firewire external drives
- external network attached storage
- iomega makes a fairly new alternative to their "zip" drives called a
  "rev" drive using 35GB capacity cartridges
- iomega again, for their "rev" cartridges makes a 10 slot auto-loader
  that would almost make it like a tape changer


An aside, which won't tell you linux guru's anything new, but which I
recently found out.  Under RH at least, you can label an external drive
with a unique identifier.  The /etc/fstab file can use that identifier
rather than a device path.  Each of several external devices/drives
can have their own unique mount point.  Whenever you plug in one of
the drives, no matter which port you plug it into, it will be mounted
on the same directory you have chosen.

I can envision a setup where a virtual changer, using external drives,
has a top level directory with subdirs labeled "slot-1", "slot-2", ...
And whichever or as many external drives as you have plugged in, they
always get mounted back to the same slot you originally specified.

Kinda like barcodes :)

-- 
Jon H. LaBadie                  jon AT jgcomp DOT com
 JG Computing
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