Iomega Peerless or Tape Drive

[Frost Byte]

I'm working with my uncle and his old 8GB (key word old) went out. He wants to replace it with someting else to back up his data. He needs some type of revmoveable media like a tape. I looked into Iomega and they sold this drive called a Peerless which is a disk that holds 10 or 20GB. I don't really trust tape drives, but i've only used old ones. What do you guys think. SHould I go for this product or get a tape drive. And if I do decide to go with a tape drive, what brand should i get?

Thanks

Chad

[Xaotic]

The Peerless would seem to be a good option for a business user, but the pricing seems rather high. You might want to get an USB 2.0 enclosure, HDD and USB 2.0 card at a lower price, unless you'll be needing multiple drives to back up the data. The Peerless system is based on using interchangeable drives and may be overkill for the situation, since he was using 8GB. I have used and still do use tape drives for business and had good reliability, but prices for good systems are high as well. Another option would be to use a CDRW to backup his data.

[Breadfan]

The external IDE drive isn't a bad idea. I'm even thinking of implementing it on our server upgrade at work.

Think about it...buy a 100gb 5400rpm IDE drive in an external enclosure. The 5400rpm should stay plenty cool.

Anyway, partition that into 5 20gb partitions, and you can back up 20gb of data 5 days a week, and come the fifth day, you still have your backup from 4 days ago. Then just start the cycle again. No matter what, you'll always have 5 days worth of backups.

And, its alot faster than a tape, and more reliable than cassettes.

Its also portable, and you CAN take it home with you.

Only issue would be if one of the partitions went bad, its easier to get a new cassette than it is a new HDD. But then look at costs and as long as you don't get a used IBM 75GXP you should be fine :)

Compare the cost of that setup to the cost of a nice SCSI tape drive that'll do 20gb per night. And if you don't need 20gb, then you can partition the drive into smaller partitions and have more room for more backups...

Mike