Posted by Carl Lowenstein on 03/22/06 00:05

In article <121vnvca9kck311@news.supernews.com>,
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. But for
>that price you can't backup to tape cartridge of much quanitity. 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 (or if you use DVD-R dual layer or
>DVD+R double-layer discs, approximately 210 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. (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.)

Minor practical problem: since all DVDs look alike, except perhaps for a
slight difference on one side between recorded and blank, how do you propose
to keep all of your backups organized?

You are lost in a twisty maze of DVDs, all alike.

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


carl
--
carl lowenstein marine physical lab u.c. san diego
clowenst@ucsd.edu

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