Posted by Rod Speed on 03/21/06 18:41

Ken Moiarty <kmoiarty35@shaw.ca> wrote:

> Well guys, I finally found my 'holy grail' robot to physically
> automate CD/DVD disc spanning for backup purposes. No I'm not talking
> about one of those office copier sized machines that only institutions
> can get enough use out of to get a return on their institutional sized
> investment. However, it does come from that "industrial/institutional"
> category. Yet it is the first of such products I've seen that a consumer
> like myself could talk myself into buying (admittedly, though, with my
> eyes closed) It's the MF
> Digital Baxter Automated CD DVD Duplicator. But it doesn't just
> duplicate or make disc copies. It's primarily what's they call an
> "autodisc loader". It can be used in any of many different ways,
> including spanning DVD discs for backup data. And the price is an almost
> down to earth $839.00. Admittedly more than most large hard drives are
> sold for today.

Yep, so hard drives make more sense.

> But for that price you can't backup to tape cartridge of much quanitity.

Yep, tape has passed its useby date for the backup
of personal desktop systems. Replaced by hard drives.

> It holds up to 25 discs at a time, robotically moving discs into and out
> of write drives as needed. That's roughly 115 GB

$839 buys a lot of 300G hard drives.

> (or if you use DVD-R dual layer or DVD+R
> double-layer discs, approximately 210 GB)

Those are pretty lousy value per GB,

> per unattended backup session. I would personally have no problem
> reloading the unit with fresh discs as often as two or three or more
> times if necessary, to backup all hard drive images in my computer to
> DVD-RW, DVD-RAM or whatever. I could load up and start the backup
> process before I leave for work. Come home after work and repeat the
> process. Do the same at bedtime (if still necessary by now) to complete
> the backup.

Makes a lot more sense to write to a couple of 300G drives instead.

> (I don't know if it can write to BD disks, but if it and/or when it does,
> once BD disc prices become affordable the 25 disc capacity will no longer
> pose any potential mild inconvenience whatsoever, and total backups to
> DVD will be able to routinely started and completed automatically
> according to schedule with only the most infrequent and briefest of human
> intervention.)

Thats always true when a hard drive is used instead.

> I would still use a large external hard drive for completely hands off
> routine nightly backup of course. But every few weeks at most I could do
> this redundant DVD backup as well for a complementary kind of redundancy
> not far from totally secure data backup.

Cant see the point of spending $839 for that myself.

> And I could even easily make automated disk copies of my backup DVDs for
> even more backup redundancy. Hence, for the first time I could consider
> what gets stored in my computer to be safer from loss than that which I
> presently print paper hard copies of so as to file in a physical filing
> cabinet (e.g. banking transactions, software purchases, etc...etc...).

You dont need a changer for that stuff, just a normal DVD burner.

> Heres the link:
> http://www.proactionmedia.com/proddetail.asp?prod=E5910

No thanks, lousy value.

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