danderer@sun.acs.udel.edu (David G Anderer) (10/06/89)
We've got a Novell LAN (SFT 2.15) supporting approximately 50 PCs used for administration and software development. To date we've been backing up to 60 Mb. tapes. That's a clumsy media. We're also centralizing our records, code, and software retention system. This means we'll want archival copies of lots (a gig or two) of data on a regular basis. I see a couple options here: 1. Optical RW - Don't need a RW capability. 2. 8 mm tape - Nice capacity, cheap media, but slow access. Given our so-so experience with magnetic tape I'd perfer a device that looks like a DOS file system. 3. WORM I also see a couple of ways to configure this - as a device off the Novell server (don't see a reason to) or attached to a workstation (where one can just XCOPY from the server.) So: Are those the options? Anything else worth considering? Is WORM the best of the lot today? If WORM, which worm? Reliability and support is the most important thing here. (Is there a WORM format standard such that a disc can be transported between different vendors hw?) Will a WORM work nicely with DOS utilities - say as a dump device for Fastback? Is a workstation-based approach better than a server-based approach? What (if anything) is *wrong* with my thinking? Thanks. -- Dave Anderer Academic Computing and Instructional Technology University of Delaware