Tape for archiving, question.

[eltaeb]

I have about a 1000 cdrs with all sorts of archived mediafiles on them. Since two years I've began using dvd's to put my files on, and has since reached about the same amount and this is still growing fast.

Now I'm a bit concerned with losing my data because of corrupted cds/dvds.

I was wondering if streaming everything on tape would be a good archiving method? I have a couple of TeraByte worth of data, what would be a good solution? The budget cannot exceed 2000 euros.

What would be a reason to go with RAID5 harddrives? I'm not going to be accessing the tapes a lot. Are there good storage solutions to handle that kind of data within the same budget?

 

[fishmahn]

Don't know. For businesses the big thing is still tape. Tape is less fragile than CD/DVD, but much harder to access (you need to restore it to a hard drive before using).

With terabytes of data, you'll definitely be using multiple tapes, so whether the tape holds 36gig or 120gig isn't a huge issue except for the price. Another issue is you have to be sure you have the same backup software on hand when you need to restore. With a DVD you stick it in and it works.

You should be able to get a drive and enough tapes in your budget, but I don't know about prices for you because I'm in the US. For personal use I would look at Travan (cheap and only holds 10gig/tape) or DAT (not as cheap but still affordable and holds up to 36gig/tape) AIT, DLT, etc., are pretty much out of your budget - the drives can easily cost more than your budget.

Best archiving practice: make 3 copies of everything, put 1 off site, and test every copy annually, replacing as needed from another copy. Any type of archive can go bust...

Mike.