[Discuss] Possible backup scenarios for a 500GB drive

[John Blomfield]

Alan W. Irwin wrote:
>
> I am buying a desktop, and I agree your suggestion is also a good backup
> possibility for that case, but one key advantage of external drives is 
> you
> can store them off-site to help guard against the case of a fire or some
> other office disaster.  Also note that both the rsync and dump/restore
> methods are fast (they only deal with changed files after the first 
> use) so
> I don't think the speed advantage of internal drives is going to be of
> paramount importance.
>
> Alan
Yes, that's true but it does depend on how large your incremental files 
are, and how often you need to renew your "full" backup.  If you think 
you need a 500GB drive that sounds like a lot of data to me and my 
experience of backing up over my network with rsync tells me that you 
might find the time significant.  I don't know how the speed of a 100Mb 
network compares to USB.  I now have a 1Gb router so I hope to speed up 
my transfers when I upgrade my computer NIC's. Another option for off 
site storage is to install your backup drive in a removable tray but you 
do need to shut down and reboot when you remove the drive and possibly 
reset the BIOS options, unless you invest in a more expensive "hot 
pluggable" drive.

John Blomfield
> __________________________
> Alan W. Irwin
>
> Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and 
> Astronomy,
> University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).
>
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> implementation
> for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting 
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> Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project
> (lbproject.sf.net).
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