Backing up valueable data: which medium?

[ktf]

Hi all,

For about 3 months now, I'm responsible for the computer network at the small office where my father works. Currently we have all our data on a mirroring RAID setup, but of course that's not safe enough when considering human error. So I was considering what to buy to backup.

First: tapes. For some reason I don't trust tapes, and we don't have to backup terabytes of data. We're currently talking about 300MB of data, but that will be more in the future of course. I think tapes are to expensive for our goal.

Second: Harddisks. Well, I don't trust harddisks too. They're too fragile

Third: Flashmedia. Still way too expensive

Fourth... Well, optical media. Not really expensive, easy to use, long data retention (when using the right brand) and of course some of them are WORM, so they can't be overwritten

My idea was to buy a Samsung SH-S222A, as all harddisks I use use SATA, I prefer an optical drive using IDE, as I these are unused at the moment. So, my first question is: is this a good burner? As I'll use it for archival, it should be.

Then, I have the choice of CD-R, DVD+R (DL), DVD-R (DL) and DVD-RAM. I think I'll use DVD-RAM for complete backup + incrementals every day and a DVD+R at the end of the month. My second question: Do you agree this is a good setup?

Thanks in advance!

[DrageMester]

First of all, do you really mean 300 [B]Mega[/B]Bytes and not 300 [B]Giga[/B]Bytes?

Welcome to the forum!

[ktf]

Thanks

Yes, I do. I’ll explain. I just implented a system which uses FTP over SSL to share files between two offices at different locations (some 60km apart) over the internet, securely. It now contains some photos, excel sheets, CAD-drawings etc. so it isn’t that big. Our internet connection is too slow (60KB/s upload) to save it on two locations.

In the near future, I want to create a system which automagically backs up files on the clients on our local network, but I think that won’t be much too, probably less than a gigabyte.

However, these 300MB consists of some excel-sheets which are very, very valuable. (probably worth the cost of opening up one of the two harddisks after a harware failure, but again, that doesn’t protect you from human error) So it is worth the hassle of making a full back-up every month I think.

Well, anyway, I don’t know what to expect when considering how much data I will have to backup in the future.

P.S.: Third question: I think I’ll store the DVD’s here: http://www.hama.de/portal/articleId93501/action2563?lid=12 Anyone comments about whether or not Hama is a good brand, and are these sleeves good enough?