Our data are so sensitive that we wipe our backups as soon as they are
created to keep them from getting into the wrong hands. Just like the
printer we have that is connected directly to the shredder so that you
can print data that is too sensitive for even you to see, the automatic
backup destruction prevents any possibility of backup tapes falling into
the wrong hands. Combine that with encrypting all data with random values
that aren't recorded and we have a sure way of keeping our data confidential.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

On 06/06/2023 21:18, SH wrote:
>>> you will find backing up to SATA HDDs or SSDs will be faster than DVDs
>>> and by automating as much of it as possible makes life much easier.
>>
>> Speed is not really an issue because it's not as if I'm sitting around
>> waiting for the burning to finish , I do my various activities as
>> normal. So > it's just a matter of entering the DVD in the drive and
>> typing the
> command.
>
> fair enough :-)
>
>
>>> HDDs and SSDs are also much bigger than DVDs, heck a 500 GB SSD will
>>> hold 100 full DVD's worth.
>>
>> But present a single point of failure.
>>
>
> Agreed with, and I found this out the hard way when I had 4 IDE drives
> on an adaptec 2400A controller..... the controller failed....   so could
> not access any of the 4 drives as they had been configured as a single
> RAID 5 array.
>
> I now use an Adaptec 7805 which allows me to connect up to 8 SATA drives.
>
> I can configure these to be as 8 single drives and formatted to ext4 or
> ext5.
>
> So back up to SDA, then rsync SDA to SDB, ditto SDB to SDC, ditto SDC to
> SDD, ditto SDD to SDE, ditto SDE to SDF, ditto SDF to SDG and finally
> SDG to SDH.
>
> If all 8 drives are 500 GB say, you;s be able to store 100 DVDs on each
> drive, so you'd have 8 copies of the 100 DVDs. So you;d have to be
> really unlucky to have all 8 drives fail simultaneously
>
> I keep a few USB to SATA caddies spare, so if the single controller
> fails, I can choose any one of those 8 HDDs and stick in a caddy and
> then use my fave linux Live distro or spare Linux box to get at my
> backups if I am not able to source a replacement controller.
>
> I have had up to 3 NASes, all syncing to each other so with a 2TB drive
> in each NAS, you'd be able to back up 400 DVD's thrice over :-)
>
> the OneDrive thing is a good off-site back up as my last line of defence.
>

P.S I have seen some Icydock hard disc caddies that have both a USB
socket and a SATA & Power socket in the back.

The PC has a backplane that the caddies plugs into and works over SATA.

You can pull any caddy out, use a USB lead to connect the caddy to a PC
and then mount and browse the partitions.

(this only works if you have NOT set the caddies up as part of a
Hardware based RAID array or if Software RAID based, you'd have to trust
that all the caddies will work over USB with Linux MDAM / MD ...)

SH <i.love@spam.com> writes:

> The Win boxes all have a 2nd hard drive to back up to amd also an
> automatic backup to back up to a networked NAS.

What do you use to back up in Windows? I have a SpiderOak subscription
which allows convenient choosing of folders and files to back up but
it's for remote backups and I'd like local backups too. Not that I have
that much to back up in Windows.

As I understand it, Windows 10 ships a broken backup tool (to promote
OneDrive, I suppose) and also a working one which is called "Backup and
Restore Windows 7" which works but it's pretty clunky. I think I tried
Aomei too and some others but didn't find a program I like.

On 6 Jun 2023 08:45:58 +1000
not@telling.you.invalid (Computer Nerd Kev) wrote:

> It sounds like you keep an archive of all your old backups

Yes.

> (as opposed to using DVD-R/W discs).

On 6 Jun 2023 11:09:30 GMT
Bob Eager <news0009@eager.cx> wrote:
> On Tue, 06 Jun 2023 10:55:47 +0000, Spiros Bousbouras wrote:
>
> > I buy Verbatim or TDK , both respectable brands as far as I know.
>
> I look for any brand that uses Taiyo Yuden dye, etc. Manufacturers change
> what they use over time.

Is there any reason to think that dye manufacturers keep their products
more constant (or improving) over time than DVD manufacturers (or
manufacturers of any other writable medium for that matter) ?

> I always check read what I have written.

Yeah , definitely.

SH <i.love@spam.com> wrote:
> P.S I have seen some Icydock hard disc caddies that have both a USB
> socket and a SATA & Power socket in the back.
>
> The PC has a backplane that the caddies plugs into and works over SATA.
>
> You can pull any caddy out, use a USB lead to connect the caddy to a PC
> and then mount and browse the partitions.
>
> (this only works if you have NOT set the caddies up as part of a
> Hardware based RAID array or if Software RAID based, you'd have to trust
> that all the caddies will work over USB with Linux MDAM / MD ...)

If the individual disks, when in the individual caddies, show up on
Linux as individual disks (i.e. if there are two disks and you get a
/dev/sdc for the first and a /dev/sdd for the second) they they *can*
be used with Linux's md driver.

The md driver simply uses a group of linux disk devices (this can be
whole disks, partitions on a given disk, or simply files via the
loopback driver) as it's "set of disks". It does not care how they are
physically connected to the system, if a /dev/sd? device shows up for
them, they can be made part of a md raid array.

Naturally, native individual SATA connections will be much faster than
a bunch of USB2 caddies connected to a USB2 hub with the hub connected
via a single USB2 cable to the system. But both setups will work, just
with different levels of performance.

On 07/06/2023 10:43, Spiros Bousbouras wrote:
> On 6 Jun 2023 11:09:30 GMT
> Bob Eager <news0009@eager.cx> wrote:
>> On Tue, 06 Jun 2023 10:55:47 +0000, Spiros Bousbouras wrote:
>>
>>> I buy Verbatim or TDK , both respectable brands as far as I know.
>>
>> I look for any brand that uses Taiyo Yuden dye, etc. Manufacturers change
>> what they use over time.
>
> Is there any reason to think that dye manufacturers keep their products
> more constant (or improving) over time than DVD manufacturers (or
> manufacturers of any other writable medium for that matter) ?

the market for prerecorded DVDs and blank DVDs is shrinking fast due to:

(a) Very few new computers & laptops now come with a DVD drive

(b) people download software from the internet instead of using
installation media liek DVDs

(c) Many people now stream off the internet their films via
Prime/Netflix/Disney/Now/AppleTV rather than buy or rent movies on DVDs.

(d) Falling demand for DVD freeview/freesat recorders as people can
watch catchup TV on iPlayer/ITVHub/All4/Demand5/UKTV via teh internet

(e) far fewer DVD players are being made now, ditto DVD drives for computers

(f) Blu-Ray never really took off in the same way as DVD did.

(g) people's broadband is becoming faster and cheaper thanks to the
fibre foll out and the alt-nets.

Developing a new DVD dye costs millions and it is now much harder to
recoup that investment in R&D.

So what will happen is the current commercial formulations will continue
to be used until eventually the DVD market becomes too small and
commercially unviable abd then all production of dvd discs, DVD
players/recorders and DVD drives will cease.

I have a number of packs of Verbatim DVD blank media I have for sale on
eBay for several months and no one has bought them yet.... :-(

If anyone is interested in blank DVD +R and DVD-R and DVD-RAM media and
also in either SATA or EIDE DVD burner drives, reply to this post :-)

P.P.S

this looks rather interesting..... :-D (if money is no object)

https://www.asustor.com/en-gb/product?p_id=80

yes, you could in theory put in up to 12 off 4TB M2 NVME drives into
this box, which runs on linux and is a NAS.

This NAS has a 10 Gbe NIC (the CPU fitted does not have many PCIe Lanes
which is a serious bottlenck but thats a seperate discussion for another
day)

So a single 4TB M2 NVME drive could store up to 800 full DVDs...

with a full 12 M2 drives installed, you could back up that 800 DVD disc
collection 12 times over..... a total capacity of 48 TB or 96 TB once
8TB drives become available.

and there are USB-C to M2 NVME caddies so if the NAS unit failed, you'd
still be able to access the NVME drives via USB-C and mount them as EXT4
partitions on a linux box

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sabrent-Type-C-Tool-Free-Enclosure-EC-SNVE/dp/B08RVC6F9Y

I have a spare PC here as it happens, I've just shoved in a 1TB M2 NVME
drive (to put Proxmox and VM VXHDS on) and am about to buy and add 4 off
2TB Sata3 2.5 inch SSDs

SATA3 can go up to 550 - 575 MB/s ish which will require 5Gbe NIC
interface card & networking as well or the SSDs will be throttled.

Having said that,, rsyncing the SSDs to each other within the box should
be fast. :-)

I will then put either OMV or truenas or Xigmanas on it and assign the 4
SSDs to the NAS Virtual machine.

On 07/06/2023 09:50, Anssi Saari wrote:
> SH <i.love@spam.com> writes:
>
>> The Win boxes all have a 2nd hard drive to back up to amd also an
>> automatic backup to back up to a networked NAS.
>
> What do you use to back up in Windows? I have a SpiderOak subscription
> which allows convenient choosing of folders and files to back up but
> it's for remote backups and I'd like local backups too. Not that I have
> that much to back up in Windows.
>
> As I understand it, Windows 10 ships a broken backup tool (to promote
> OneDrive, I suppose) and also a working one which is called "Backup and
> Restore Windows 7" which works but it's pretty clunky. I think I tried
> Aomei too and some others but didn't find a program I like.

Synctoy is your friend!

https://updov.com/download-synctoy/

You will also need to download and install .NET frameworks too.

On Tue, 06 Jun 2023 17:19:21 GMT
scott@alfter.diespammersdie.us wrote:
> Media get backed up to BD-R. I knocked together some scripts to manage
> this:
>
> https://gitlab.com/salfter/bdarchiver
>
> A database that tracks what files are on what disc is maintained by the
> scripts and written to each disc. I write 20 GB to single-layer BD-Rs,
[...]
> I've also
> occasionally needed to recover individual files that had somehow
> disappeared. The database makes locating the right disc trivial.

Do you also have a copy of the database on your hard disk (or equivalent) ? I
would imagine you need the database to be easily accessible to be able to
find what file is on what BD-R. And how do you identify the BD-R ? Do you
write anything on their surface with a marker ?

I have a database (just a text file with an appropriate format) of what's
on each DVD I burn and I write on each DVD with a marker some identifying
number.

On Wed, 7 Jun 2023 21:36:03 +0100
SH <i.love@spam.com> wrote:
> On 07/06/2023 10:43, Spiros Bousbouras wrote:
> > On 6 Jun 2023 11:09:30 GMT
> > Bob Eager <news0009@eager.cx> wrote:
> >> On Tue, 06 Jun 2023 10:55:47 +0000, Spiros Bousbouras wrote:
> >>
> >>> I buy Verbatim or TDK , both respectable brands as far as I know.
> >>
> >> I look for any brand that uses Taiyo Yuden dye, etc. Manufacturers change
> >> what they use over time.
> >
> > Is there any reason to think that dye manufacturers keep their products
> > more constant (or improving) over time than DVD manufacturers (or
> > manufacturers of any other writable medium for that matter) ?
[...]
> Developing a new DVD dye costs millions and it is now much harder to
> recoup that investment in R&D.
>
> So what will happen is the current commercial formulations will continue
> to be used until eventually the DVD market becomes too small and
> commercially unviable abd then all production of dvd discs, DVD
> players/recorders and DVD drives will cease.

Do you have any timescale in mind ? Because I can easily find floppy drives
and disks (an even older technology) on amazon.

> I have a number of packs of Verbatim DVD blank media I have for sale on
> eBay for several months and no one has bought them yet.... :-(

Why would anyone search on ebay for this kind of thing ? I mean I can find
writable DVDs on amazon (among many other websites , I'm sure) , several pound
shops (the usual well known brands of DVDs) and also big chains selling
stationery.

> If anyone is interested in blank DVD +R and DVD-R and DVD-RAM media and
> also in either SATA or EIDE DVD burner drives, reply to this post :-)

--
A good compiler can translate an 8K BASIC program in two or three
minutes.
http://www.atariarchives.org/mlb/chapter7.php

> [...]
>> Developing a new DVD dye costs millions and it is now much harder to
>> recoup that investment in R&D.
>>
>> So what will happen is the current commercial formulations will continue
>> to be used until eventually the DVD market becomes too small and
>> commercially unviable abd then all production of dvd discs, DVD
>> players/recorders and DVD drives will cease.
>
> Do you have any timescale in mind ? Because I can easily find floppy drives
> and disks (an even older technology) on amazon.

Good question. much of the floppy drives and flopp discs for sale is 2nd
hand. The last floppy disc manufacturer closed soem time ago and I think
there is a Japanese or US compnay trading in 2nd hand floppies & drives
and they occasionally buy up job lots of discovered still sealed
floppies and drives.

Coming back to DVDs, I'd say 10 ish years, then it will be legacy unsold
stock thereafter

>> I have a number of packs of Verbatim DVD blank media I have for sale on
>> eBay for several months and no one has bought them yet.... :-(
>
> Why would anyone search on ebay for this kind of thing ? I mean I can find
> writable DVDs on amazon (among many other websites , I'm sure) , several pound
> shops (the usual well known brands of DVDs) and also big chains selling
> stationery.

I did wonder about selling on Amazon but I don't know if Amazon will
accept private sellers in the same way as eBay does?

On 08/06/2023 10:57, SH wrote:
>> [...]
>>> Developing a new DVD dye costs millions and it is now much harder to
>>> recoup that investment in R&D.
>>>
>>> So what will happen is the current commercial formulations will continue
>>> to be used until eventually the DVD market becomes too small and
>>> commercially unviable abd then all production of dvd discs, DVD
>>> players/recorders and DVD drives will cease.
>>
>> Do you have any timescale in mind ? Because I can easily find floppy
>> drives
>> and disks (an even older technology) on amazon.
>
> Good question. much of the floppy drives and flopp discs for sale is 2nd
> hand. The last floppy disc manufacturer closed soem time ago and I think
> there is a Japanese or US compnay trading in 2nd hand floppies & drives
> and they occasionally buy up job lots of discovered still sealed
> floppies and drives.
>
> Coming back to DVDs, I'd say 10 ish years, then it will be legacy unsold
> stock thereafter
>
>>> I have a number of packs of Verbatim DVD blank media I have for sale on
>>> eBay for several months and no one has bought them yet.... :-(
>>
>> Why would anyone search on ebay for this kind of thing ? I mean I can
>> find
>> writable DVDs on amazon (among many other websites , I'm sure) ,
>> several pound
>> shops (the usual well known brands of DVDs) and also big chains selling
>> stationery.
>
> I did wonder about selling on Amazon but I don't know if Amazon will
> accept private sellers in the same way as eBay does?
>
>
>

P.S. this appeared in today's Telegraph:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/2023/06/08/dvd-player-woke-police/

SH <i.love@spam.com> writes:

> Synctoy is your friend!
>
> https://updov.com/download-synctoy/
>
> You will also need to download and install .NET frameworks too.

Thanks. I remember using the PowerToy of the same name in Windows
XP. But it's a sync tool, not a backup tool. I guess I could still use
it.

I remember using a Java based backup tool which ran in Windows and Linux
long ago. Can't remember the name, I wonder if they're still around. Ah,
CrashPlan. Well, still around but it's subscription now.

On Sun, 4 Jun 2023 12:14:30 -0000 (UTC), Spiros Bousbouras wrote:
> By policies/practices I mean not just the back-ups themselves but
> also whether you have any such policies on using your back-ups
> for recovering from various disaster scenarios and whether you
> ever got to test those policies for real.

I strive for praticality while getting as close to 3-2-1 as possible
given that I am 1) fallible and 2) lazy. I'd say once every 6-8 months
I end up having to restore something from a backup, somewhere due to
one or both of those characteristics.

Everything is automated. My laptop uses Time Machine on macOS, my desktop
uses the Windows 10 File History feature. My servers use a bunch of
application specific scripts running nightly out of cron. All the
configuration is managed by Puppet and kept in a remote git repository.

Conceptually there are 3 sites, my home, my office and a colocation facility.
I use rdiff-backup to make nightly copies from home to the colo and from the
colo and the office to home. I keep 3 days of incrementals, but the
individual scripts / backup agents have their own retention periods (both
Time Machine and Windows File History are ~ forever, most of my scripts are
either 7 or 14 days).

I do have a USB stick of encryption key backups in a safe deposit box.

I have a loose set of documentation for various disaster recovery scenarios,
I lightly test them every few years -- typically around a Debian release as
instead of upgrading I'll rebuild systems from scratch using Puppet and
backup data.

--
"The avalanche has started, it is too late for the pebbles to vote."
--Kosh

On 5 Jun 2023 09:17:37 +1000, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
> I'm surprised that people are still using DVDs.

I have quite a lot of customers still using all sorts of archaic
phyiscal media. Tape is quite popular as well. Cheap, easily
stored, easily destroyed, certifiable.

--
"The avalanche has started, it is too late for the pebbles to vote."
--Kosh

Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 06 Jun 2023 17:19:21 GMT
> scott@alfter.diespammersdie.us wrote:
>> Media get backed up to BD-R. I knocked together some scripts to manage
>> this:
>>
>> https://gitlab.com/salfter/bdarchiver
>>
>> A database that tracks what files are on what disc is maintained by the
>> scripts and written to each disc. I write 20 GB to single-layer BD-Rs,
> [...]
>> I've also
>> occasionally needed to recover individual files that had somehow
>> disappeared. The database makes locating the right disc trivial.
>
> Do you also have a copy of the database on your hard disk (or equivalent) ?

It's a MySQL database that I keep online at home. The backup script
includes a call to mysqldump to store the current state of the database on
each backup disc. (Earlier backup discs don't have this; I was instead
rsyncing the database backup to a VPS.) Restoring from backup would first
involve getting the database online: install MySQL (or MariaDB) someplace,
then load the last database backup into it.

> And how do you identify the BD-R ? Do you write anything on their surface
> with a marker ?

Each disc is labeled "backup_#" when the image is generated with mkisofs.
That number is also marked on the surface. For over a decade, I was just
writing the disc number and backup date with a Sharpie, but I recently
acquired a Casio CW-L300 label printer (in like-new condition, still in its
original box) that is able to print directly onto the disc surface.

> I have a database (just a text file with an appropriate format) of what's
> on each DVD I burn and I write on each DVD with a marker some identifying
> number.

Mine tracks when files are deleted, removing them from the database so they
won't be restored. It also maximizes disc usage by writing the largest
files that will fit on a disc; there's a stored procedure that figures that
out.

--
_/_
/ v \ Scott Alfter (remove the obvious to send mail)
(IIGS( https://alfter.us/ Top-posting!
\_^_/ >What's the most annoying thing on Usenet?

Matthew Ernisse <matt@going-flying.com> wrote:
> On 5 Jun 2023 09:17:37 +1000, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
>> I'm surprised that people are still using DVDs.
>
> I have quite a lot of customers still using all sorts of archaic
> phyiscal media. Tape is quite popular as well.

I would imagine only the newer tape formats that store vastly more
data than a DVD though.

> Cheap, easily stored, easily destroyed, certifiable.

Fair enough, but these days I'd say it only makes sense to use
DVD for backups if you can fit everything onto one disc.

I do still burn CDs/DVDs for (single) Linux (etc.) install discs,
and funnily enough last time I mentioned that on Usenet many people
told me that _I_ was behind the times.

--
__ __
#_ < |\| |< _#

On 15 Jun 2023 08:26:51 +1000, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
> Matthew Ernisse <matt@going-flying.com> wrote:
>> On 5 Jun 2023 09:17:37 +1000, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
>>> I'm surprised that people are still using DVDs.
>>
>> I have quite a lot of customers still using all sorts of archaic
>> phyiscal media. Tape is quite popular as well.
>
> I would imagine only the newer tape formats that store vastly more
> data than a DVD though.

Certainly the newer LTO tapes account for the majority but I have seen
everything from 5.25" floppy, to CD, to DVD. There is a lot of 'legacy'
equipment still happily kicking around. Optical media also has the
benefit of being widely understood as WORM which comes in handy.

>> Cheap, easily stored, easily destroyed, certifiable.
>
> Fair enough, but these days I'd say it only makes sense to use
> DVD for backups if you can fit everything onto one disc.

For the most part I agree, though optical media does make a very
satisfying noise when fed through a household-duty crosscut paper
shredder.

--
"The avalanche has started, it is too late for the pebbles to vote."
--Kosh