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?"
Needlessly elaborate solution (Score:3, Interesting)
Splitting Discs (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm trying to back up my pictures and my mp3's on a regular basis, but at 15 Gig's for one and 56 Gig's for the other even putting them on DVD can be a pain.
Every app I've used (at least on XP) can automatically "split" the files over multiple discs but they all use their own format for it making recovering the file difficult if not impossible with out the original program.
Is there anything that will split on the file structure so I can just read the files like they were burned normally?
Right now I keep adding and removing files from the "to burn" list and try and get as close to each disc limit and then do the same for the next disc... makes me put off my backups for longer then I should....
Re:Needlessly elaborate solution (Score:2, Interesting)
Links on that page link to a lego version [redfrontdoor.org]
RAID1 Array as backup (Score:3, Interesting)
Not sure of all the details, but it works like this:
1. Setup 2 disks with RAID1 mirroring. Designate one as the backup disk.
2. Copy files to the mirror
3. Once a week, unmount the backup disk, take it out and insert a new disk.
4. Turn on the machine. When the array comes back online, the disks sync.
I'm still trying to figure out if this is a wise idea, but it's low-cost and effective. 1 Device and 4 decent-quality 200GB disks will cost you what-- $1200? How much do 200GB tape solutions cost now?
Anyone hear of some similar solutions?
rimage 2x burning rant (Score:3, Interesting)
Worst tech support experience I've consistantly had was with rimage and it lasted over 1 month!! All I was trying to do was replace a broken drive they had assured me was standard way back in the presale days. They had no replacements, wanted me to buy a new unit at $6k. My old software which was great in its earlier days had gone through some 'improvements' post veritas buyout and wasn't working anymore. Rimage had a new $$product that was supposed to replace all these features and more. I demoed it all and it was horridly inefficient- IIRC- 4 cd-r's took 3 hrs to make 4 cds, nevermind the crashes. The old unit with 4x drives was much faster. Then they too told me nobody actually uses this out of the box, they just buy the dev kit and customize it. Then they recommended I do the same for my team of developers. Sounds like a handy tech center stock answer. Guess what. I dont have a team of developers! I suggested they use their team of developers to make their own stuff work as advertised.
After much strife they finally provided me with someone at another company who could provide me with a copy of their customized firmware so i could replace my drives with identical ones. The robotics finally gave up the ghost a year later.
My replacement for it was from a less known company handled through discmakers. Discjuggler runs it with a special autoloader product called imagejuggler which works very nicely (you can also use DJ.NET and they have a web interface too. They could improve a few things but all in all robotics are top notch and simple, no weird firmware, replacable (upgradable!) drives (as long as your burning app supports it, which dj handles many) and I can easily burn different images simultaneously. Furthermore both discmakers and DJ support was great.
http://www.discmakers.com/duplicators/products/el
and yup its only for windows. but at least you get browser ui.