willisoften Posted April 13, 2003 Report Share Posted April 13, 2003 I've come to the conclusion that CD writers are OK to back up most personal stuff but to do a proper backup what I really need is a helluva lot more capacity. I was thinking about a Seagate/Travan tape drive. Anyone have any experience with this type of thing? The drives a bit pricey and so is the media but the conveneience level seems pretty high. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
qnr Posted April 13, 2003 Report Share Posted April 13, 2003 I used to use them. I loved them, but you're right - they're pricey and relatively slow. Unfortunately I don't have a SCSI adapter in my current computer so I can't use my Travan drive right now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dalee Posted April 13, 2003 Report Share Posted April 13, 2003 Yeah, I used to have an old Iomega Tapedrive. Paralle port. Slower than mollasas in January. Firmware (under Windows was crap too). Finally traded it for a zipdrive. What I found was it was faster to re-install any software and only back up personal data. For what it is worth, dalee Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
linXbox4you Posted April 16, 2003 Report Share Posted April 16, 2003 I have been using an old HP Travan parallel tape drive for some time. Its a Colorado 5G, uses tapes with a 5 gig capacity (compressed). Yep, it's slow, but I'd rather use that than back up to CDR. You have to load the appropriate kernel modules to use the pt (parallel tape) drivers, but that is not hard at all in 9.0 or 9.1. If anyone here is interested, I will post a link to a how-to on the parallel devices. The nice thing is you can span volumes, I just set it up to run at night or whenever I'm not on the machine and feed it tapes when it needs them. Once you get a knack for what you DON'T have to back up, you don't need that much space anyway. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pzatch Posted April 17, 2003 Report Share Posted April 17, 2003 Please post a how to on this. i have an old colorado 2g I could use. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
linXbox4you Posted April 20, 2003 Report Share Posted April 20, 2003 OK, sorry it took me so long, but I do have a life other than Linux.....no really I do. Anyway, the link to the paride page is at http://www.torque.net/parport/paride.html If you have a 2.4 kernel or higher the drivers are built as modules so you can just add what you need as the article says. First, as root do: insmod paride This is the parallel port IDE support module then insmod epat which is the HP driver then insmod pt The driver for the parallel tape device At that point you should hear your drive doing some locating on the tape provided you have a cartidge loaded. After that I just use the normal tar commands to write the archive to tape. Note that most of these drivers do not supprot compression on the device itself, but that doesn't mean you can't make a .gzip file and then save it to tape. I myself prefer not to do this as it can be a problem if your media goes bad, you lose the whole archive. If your data isn't compressed you can usually read at least some of it. Hope this helps! :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JerryC Posted March 29, 2004 Report Share Posted March 29, 2004 Can anyone tell me how to get a Seagate STT3401A IDE 20GB tape drive to work with Mandrake 9.2? I have a Dell 400SC server with the Seagate tape drive, but can't get it to work. You can see the drive as hardware in the KDE Control Center, but evidently I don't know how to get the backup to the drive. When I go through the Mandrake Control Center, and try to use the backup setup wizard, it does not see the tape drive. I could backup to the CD-RW, but the capacity is an issue. I am an intermediate newbie so it will be necessary to be specific with your instructions. TIA Jerry Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pzatch Posted March 30, 2004 Report Share Posted March 30, 2004 Thanks that gets me going in the right direction and I think I can find the right track from there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
max Posted March 30, 2004 Report Share Posted March 30, 2004 I don't want to start a flame. But wy don't do a complete hd image over a second similar hard disk ? That needs, I think, a boot with knoppix or mandrake-move or similar, then leave the system do an overnight backup. That way, too, the recovery could be as fast as swapping two hard disk craddles. Comments welcome. Massimo Corinaldesi Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pzatch Posted March 31, 2004 Report Share Posted March 31, 2004 Don't have hard disks craddled. And that would require a manual hardware change. Using a tape or external drive you can make it automatic and leave it alone untill you need it. If you ever do. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
willisoften Posted March 31, 2004 Author Report Share Posted March 31, 2004 JFTR I never actually bought a tape drive though if I'd owned one I'd have been happy using it. I currently have a DVD burner so I tar.gzip everything I need and save it on a fat32 partiton and back it up under windows :woops: Hopefully someday soon I'll get DVD burning working under linux. My favoured solution would actually be an external hard drive - just because they are very convenient - I find I tend to put stuff off if it's not dead easy. I think you could actually link your home directory to it and write to it every time you write to your home directory. On the other hand look out for Mount Rainier (MRW) being supported in the 2.6 kernel. Packet writing supported in linux... a dream come true. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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