Automated CD/DVD Archival? 75
An anonymous reader asks: "Our department used to use a Cedar Technologies Desktop CD-R Publisher for fully automated backup of data (~2 CDs per day) controlled by a Linux PC. The publisher just broke and we are looking into a new backup solution to automatically burn and print CDs or DVDs. Solutions for CD/DVD duplication are available for Windows and Mac (for example: Primera and Rimage [which acquired Cedar in 2000]) but not for Linux. While a Mac would be OK, none of the manufacturers seems to offer scriptability or a command line interface which is essential for our task. Tape and HD backup are not an option - the data is already mirrored on RAIDs. Has anyone set up a similar archival system using Linux?"
One word: SCSI. (Score:2, Informative)
with "mt", "mtx" and some shell woodoo; ours did.
You might perhaps check if your vendor supports standard
SCSI commands, though.
Google (Score:2, Informative)
Sounds exactly like what you need. There are many more tools like that. Good luck.
Let me tell you about the Rimage systems (Score:5, Informative)
One of the things on the Rimage website that's kind-of misleading (at least it was to me) was that it NEEDS a windows pc in order to share the rimage machine with other machines, like a mac. But once it's setup, the machine works wonders.
What's interesting about this machine though, is that despite the ridiculous setup hurdles, after it all works they provide a fairly decent way of writing your own scripts to control the machine.
The entire device uses xml files in order to handle job requests, and the client they ship it with is actually just a beast of a java app. But the xml files are used for the imaging orders, the production reports, everything. They also have a fairly extensive sdk that allows you to do pretty much anything.
I had an unfortunately difficult time setting this thing up, but the tech support (while their english was a little lacking) were actually incredibly knowledgeable. One of the things they told me was that almost no-one who buys this device uses the provided client. It is designed to be integrated into custom work solutions, so for you this might actually be appropriate.
If you're looking for a solid dvd archival device / printer that has an autoloading function and is fully scriptable, the Rimage 2000i (or any of their devices higher end than that one) could work.
Linux/Primera (Score:3, Informative)
To burn a disk, you go into a GUI and mockup (or just load) an image to print on the disk.
Then, you print it to file -- something.prn
Then you go into another GUI and set up the task, picking an ISO image, and the image file you just made, click here, click there, then burn.
That works just fine for 40 of the same disk, but if you want a different image on each (different date or different text, or the ISO filesize) you need to make each change manually (or with tags) and then print to file and then set up each task.
Man.
In unix/linux, or with command-line tools for windows, even, that would be:
create_postscript_with_substitutions [inputs] > printerfile.prn
burn_image_and_print isofile printerfile.prn
Done. You'd be able to do everything this guy wants and more with 10 seconds of typing. You'd be able to automate processes. And it's not hard. Primera's been selling this stuff for years, and yet, no Linux support, and no command-line support.
If this had Linux support, or even DOS command-lines, I'd recommend it to everyone I meet. As is, it's an anchor.
Re:And? (Score:4, Informative)
but the existance of RAID mirrors have nothing to do with that.
a mirror protects you from hard disk failure, not against data corruption, for that you need a different thing.
also, the original poster uses 'backup' and 'archive' words. these are _totally_ different things! I think he means: i need archive, i had archive with CD/DVSs, i don't want tape/HD backup. but it seems he hadn't checked up the possibility of an HD archive.
I've recently replaced a wall full of DVDs (around 6000 discs) with a near-line HD archive system, at just 1.56$/GB total cost!
of course, for offsite backup of the archive, it still burns DVDs
Microtech (Score:3, Informative)
It's windows-based but I've set up a few of them to pull their data from a Samba share. Think of it as an appliance. I wrote some software on the linux side to control it - they have specs available for their file formats if you want to explore writing your own. That software has probably done about >30K CD's so it's definitely workable.
Pioneer DRM 3000 (Score:4, Informative)
This is probably overkill, but it is a really cool piece of equipment, and it doesn't rely on shitty windows software to do it's job. Unfortunately it costs $10000 fully loaded with 4 DVD-RW drives.
Re:And? (Score:2, Informative)
I find DVDs are much more reliable, once written. I have yet to find a long-term reliable DVD or CD writing solution. Yes, I can buy high quality drives and high quality disks, but I still get spindles with write problems. At home I just use cheap disks and find I'm saving money by tossing out spindles that don't work. It bothers me that sometimes I get no errors on writing, but get errors on reading.
Anyway, I have yet to find a reliable way to write CDs and DVDs. I'd love to use them more, but still use removable hard drives and tape instead.
BTW, IDE hard drives last a lot longer stored in proper conditions than they last during regular use. I have a set of removables that are close to 10 years old and not a single one has failed, while I have a RAID that's a few years old and half the disks have been replaced. Still, I never archive data on hard disks.
Re:Xor? (Score:3, Informative)
http://h18006.www1.hp.com/products/storageworks
Re:amanda (Score:3, Informative)