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unixronin: Galen the technomage, from Babylon 5: Crusade (Default)
Unixronin

December 2012

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Friday, February 9th, 2007 11:55 pm

I have an LTO-1 tape drive that I use for all my full backups, which I run in rotating sets every couple of months (with weekly differentials and nightly incrementals to a separate device).  It's big, fast and nasty — fast enough that I have to back up four machines at the same time to keep it streaming optimally.  But tapes don't last forever, so a few weeks ago I ordered four new Verbatim 100GB (uncompressed) LTO-1 tapes from BackupTapes.

Two weeks later, the Verbatim tapes are still on back-order.  So they contacted me today.  Actually, it turns out that the price on the Verbatim tapes was what it was because they are reconditioned tapes, a detail which had escaped me.  But the main problem was they were still on back-order.

"So," they told me, "since they're still back-ordered, what we'd like to do is fill your order with new Maxell tapes instead, at the same price.  If that's OK."

Sure, I said.  (Oddly, I have no problem with getting four brand-new 100GB tapes for the price of reconditioned ones.)

"OK then," they said.  "We'll get those out to you today.  You should have them tomorrow."

Nice work, guys.

Sunday, February 11th, 2007 12:53 am (UTC)
I guess the problem I have with backing up to disk is, in the event of something electrically catastrophic like a lightning strike, I want my backups to be OFFLINE, so that they don't get fried along with everything else.