John Drescher wrote:
>> What is the best strategy and storage media for long-term backups, say
>> to 10 or 20 years (if any)? I ask because I do have an old DLT tape
>> drive and some tapes, unusable, because its SCSI controller is no longer
>> among us. It is not 10 years old and is already a problem.
>>
>>     
> In bacula provided you have a drive that reads the old media do a
> migration to new media/tape technology when you determine the
> availability of a technology is going away. I have 80 DLT tapes with
> bacula data on them but both of my DLT IV drives are unreliable at
> best. When I get time I need to invest $600 in a new DLT (only can buy
> from "approved" vendors) so that I can do this for my old data. Most
> of this is a second copy of archived data that I have a working copy
> on the LTO2 autochanger. I know that is getting old but at least it's
> still supported in read mode with LTO4..

Which points up the basic issue. Long term archiving is a labor 
intensive process. You can't just take something and toss it in a safe 
and expect it to last forever. There has to be managed migration, 
testing, etc. You could use disk drives, but you need to keep upgrading 
them and testing them. So the drive you have the data on in 10 years 
won't be the same drive it started out on. I have backups dating back 
almost 20 years on disk drives. They have moved through multiple actual 
computers and many changes of OS.

Another issue with old archives is data format. Same story. Labor 
intensive. Old formats become obsolete. Files may need to be translated 
or updated. Details will vary depending on the data and application. For 
me, it made it reasonable to buy a copy of MacLink Plus Deluxe to get 
the various old document formats into more current open formats that are 
usable, since it can handle a huge number of old formats and does batch 
conversion. But that's personal data. Professional environments and 
those with much larger data volumes will have different needs that will 
have to be addressed in different ways.

It's the digital version of the monks of the middle ages copying 
manuscripts and distributing them to other monasteries, where they get 
copied and distributed again.


-- 
---------------

Chris Hoogendyk

-
   O__  ---- Systems Administrator
  c/ /'_ --- Biology & Geology Departments
 (*) \(*) -- 140 Morrill Science Center
~~~~~~~~~~ - University of Massachusetts, Amherst 

<hoogendyk AT bio.umass DOT edu>

--------------- 

Erdös 4



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