# Internal Tape Drive question



## fullauto (Jun 19, 2012)

I am looking for a cheap, and reliable internal tape for backup of my system.  I was wondering if any of you 'gurus' had some input about which you would recommend. I have one machine that will need daily, weekly, and monthly archiving. I will have to archive:

Apache configuration files as well as WWW directories
Proftpd configuration and directories
/root directory
a MySQL db.

Total space should be no more than 20 GB. But, scalability is good. Any *i*deas?


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## tingo (Jun 21, 2012)

My point of view: I don't use tape drives anymore. All my backups are on hard drives (fileservers, the most recent incarnations with zfs), which get migrated every few years. These days, I only use tape drives to read old tapes occasionally.


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## vermaden (Jun 22, 2012)

@fullauto

A DDS-4 tape will gave you 20 GB of raw data.
A DAT 72 tape will store 36 GB of raw data.
A LTO-1 tape will handle 100 GB of raw data.

There are many choices here, these above are just examples. Take a look at the FreeBSD Handbook about tape backups: 
http://freebsd.org/handbook/backups-tapebackups.html

But also manpages:
mt(1)
sa(4)

@tingo

Tapes are great for offsite, if you do not need offsite, then you do not need tapes.


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## fullauto (Jun 23, 2012)

So you think a file server on the premises and one remote for offsite backups is fine? And also, what is ZFS?



			
				tingo said:
			
		

> My point of view: I don't use tape drives anymore. All my backups are on hard drives (fileservers, the most recent incarnations with zfs), which get migrated every few years. These days, I only use tape drives to read old tapes occasionally.


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## tingo (Jun 23, 2012)

fullauto said:
			
		

> So you think a file server on the premises and one remote for offsite backups is fine?


Sure. Throw in a monthly backup to external disks that you store in a safe place, and you're good.


			
				fullauto said:
			
		

> And also, what is Zfs?



You can Google, can't you? http://lmgtfy.com/?q=zfs


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