Re: tape drives

[Bruce Smith <bruce@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> For those of you running Linux servers: what kind of ***SCSI*** tape drives
> are you using? And what software do you use with it? I like the DDS3 drives
> under other OS's, but am wondering about Linux. I've not seen ARCServe or
> Backup Exec for Linux yet... I see that Dell and others have Linux servers
> ready to go, including drives. Dell has BE and ARCServe listed as the
> software available, but I doubt it exists. Also, drives are external.

I use DDS1 and DDS2 drives under Linux and they both work fine.
I'll bet that DDS3 works just as well.

I don't have any experience with commercial backup software under Linux
so I can't comment.  I use "tar" because I don't do many restores.

I know from HPUX that commercial backups have a huge advantage when it
comes to restoring files since it can skip right to the file.  I've tested
the restore program that comes with HPUX (HP only) on a DDS2 tape that 
took 2-3 hours to backup, and I've NEVER had it take longer than 5 minutes
to find the file to be restored and start restoring.  Even the very last
file on the tape!  Tar would read though the whole tape and take as long
to restore a single file as it took to backup the entire filesystem.

If you don't have a lot to backup (less than 650MB), CDRW would be a option.

--------------------------------------------
Bruce Smith                bruce@armintl.com
System Administrator / Network Administrator
Armstrong International, Inc.
Three Rivers, Michigan  49093  USA
http://www.armstrong-intl.com/
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