[H-GEN] DVD+RW media for backups

[David Seikel]

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I've had problems with email access for a little while, so this is my belated 
response to this thread.

I have recently been thinking about a backup strategy for my Mega Distro 
Server / workstation, so describing my strategy and reasoning might be 
helpful to someone.  Even if that someone is only me B-).

Executive summary - most of my data is in the form of open source CD and DVD 
iso's.  I will use a combination of CD's and DVD's for backup.

A rough breakdown of my data, current and projected future requirements -

10 GB OS and software
5 GB static personal data
5 GB working data
8 (16) GB of music
60 GB LinuxFormat DVD's
100 (200) GB of distros

(To make matters interesting, I have recently started doing video FX work, 
this has not been taken into account yet. [1])

Most of the data consists of CD and DVD iso's of open source distributions 
that can be downloaded from the net, or otherwise recovered with only a 
little bit of effort.  The next largest lump of data is the LinuxFormat 
DVD's.  I intend to keep that up to date with the last 12 months worth, 
removing the old stuff.  Since the source of this data is the original DVD's 
anyway, recovering the data is a matter of copying from the source media 
again.  As with the distros, this data could be recovered by asking around 
HUMBUG to find someone with a copy if my originals are broken.

My music collection was created by combining the music collections of others.  
Since we all have different tastes in music, there is a large amount of it 
that I wouldn't really miss if I lost it, so I count it as non critical data.

The OS and software is all open source.  Reinstalling SuSE 8.2, or installing 
a later version, or even installing some other Linux distro will restore most 
of it.  Most of the rest came from the other distros or the LinuxFormat 
DVD's, which have already been covered.

The static personal data never changes, and consists of two parts.  One part 
is critical data, I could live without it, but I have an emotional attachment 
B-).  The other part is non critical, I can always build another collection 
of porn.

The working data largely consists of open source stuff I am working on.  Most 
of that is unmodified source code.  For the stuff that I am one of the 
maintainers of, I could simply download the development source from the 
server, and I would only lose whatever I had recently changed but not 
committed.

That leaves a small amount of system configuration data and working files that 
could not be recovered easily.

One of the functions of this box is to be the Mega Distro Server.  I will have 
to add a DVD/CD burner to support that.

My reasoning / strategy is that given the large amount of non critical data 
that is easy to recover if the backup fails and that is likely to get burned 
to CD or DVD on a regular basis anyway, I might as well just burn extra 
copies for backup purposes.  Since most of the data will be backed up on CD 
or DVD, I might as well do the same for the rest of it.  For the small amount 
of critical unrecoverable data, I will burn multiple copies on a regular 
basis, storing some copies off site.  Incremental backups will help with this 
last lot of data once I have done the initial backup.

The basic backup / restore procedure will get tested without me doing any 
extra work ("Dave, this copy of FreeBSD you just burned for me doesn't 
work.").  By making the backup of the LinuxFormat DVD's and then installing 
them on my server from the backup, I get to test the system once a month with 
out really trying.  The resulting backup media is cheap, and will be readable 
by commonly available and cheap hardware.  The risk involved in using CD's 
and DVD's as a backup media is covered by the ease of the fallback options 
for most of the data, and covered by redundancy for more critical data.

When I next work for a living (the video FX work is "work for the dole") I 
will add RAID to my machine to give me a bit more reliability in the first 
place.  RAID in combination with the above backup strategy should do the 
trick for me.


[1]  It is too early in the process to make any kind of estimate about the 
amount of critical / non critical data involved in the video FX work I will 
be doing over the next five months.  There are a few data points I can 
consider though.

The work is being done for people that have a network of a few dozen computers 
with at least two servers.  They are giving serious consideration to buying 
new equipment to support the video work.  It is their data I am working on, 
even though I am using my computer.  I can just leave it on their network and 
let them worry about it.

The data itself is original video/photo files, edit lists, 3d models, and the 
output files / temporary files.  The original video files are copied from the 
original digital tapes and the output / temporary files are generated on the 
fly as needed, the rest is tiny in comparison.  So the while we are talking 
many GB worth of data, only a tiny part needs to be backed up by me, and only 
as a precaution in case their network bozo^H^H^H^Hadmins don't know what they 
are doing.

If I actually get real work after this as a video FX expert, I hear that large 
amounts of money are usually charged for these services.  I should be able to 
afford decent backup strategies and really huge amounts of disk space then 
B-).


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