subject
So that way, it’ll become more like other backup software.
Well
You got a point there. But dont forget that for a regular home user, a tape backup engine is too expensive (i speak for me…) so normally i backup to DVD or to an external hard drive (depends on the backup content).
I think that for a free backup software it is quite good, but if development can do it that would be great.
Take care,
Marco
It’d be nice but …
IDE
SCSI
FAST SCSI
UltraSCSI
Proprietary
DAT
8mm
Ultrium
DLT
at what point does enough become enough?
I’m not knocking your idea, just pointing out some of the problems heading down that road.
Ewen 
Does the interface really matter? Most drives identify and give specifications when queried. I can do it now in Cygwin with tar to any of DLT 4000/7000/8000 or AIT/AIT2 over any available bus. The only thing I can’t manipulate with tar is my HP DLT7000 2/28 because tar cannot manipulate a library. I hafta resort to mt and continue.
And that question is not rhetorical. I don’t write low level drivers, so I honestly don’t know. I DO know I can tar to virtually anything.
It would be splendiferous to be able to do a bare metal restore of a Windows box from tape.
BTW: You CAN do backups to tape now using Bacula or Amanda. They both have Windows clients, but the backup server must run on a *nix box.
It’s been a while, and my memory may be playing tricks on me… but I do recall some old Travan drives installing drivers to make the tape backup appear with a drive letter. I would imagine that a tape drive today offering the same behaviour would work just fine… just pick the right drive letter ;D
Geeze… I haven’t even thought of a Travan drive or any of the QIC drives in almost 10 years. They were extremely slow and many worked off the floppy interface. I may even have one or two in my junk box, though I dunno if I’d have whatever software is needed to make em go. I’ve never tried one with Amanda, but I believe they are supported.
Another poster brought up the likelihood of backing up to DVD. Aside from the spanning issues, consumer grade recordable media has not proven it’s longevity. For me, the more I use CD-R/DVD-R, the less I trust them to be usable in a few years. Tapes on the other hand, have proven their worth to me many times over. I can still extract valid data from 9-track reels that are over 15 years old. I’ve had similar luck with DDS-2/3 tapes that are 6 - 8 years old and the only failure I’ve had with my DLT is when a tape broke in the drive and I had to re-thread the leader. I did lose data on that one, but recovered it all from the next set of incrementals. AIT has never once failed me. For those of you skeptical of needing data that old, think of audit and litigation. Many times that old data is what stands between you and hefty fines or worse.
For anyone curious, Bacula provides a Windows and a Linux client that can be configured to do a bare metal restore. Amanda lacks that capability and does not handle tape spanning so well, so you have to calculate your storage requirements before you build the archives and then spool them in chunks small enough to fit completely on each tape.