Replacing tape changer with USB disk drives.

[Chuck Swiger]

On Jun 16, 2008, at 3:59 PM, Christopher Sean Hilton wrote:
> I run FreeBSD 7.0-STABLE on a file server and until recently used a  
> Tape Changer for backups. I'm considering my options for a new  
> backup solution. I'm actually thinking of ditching tape and using an  
> externally attached USB or Firewire disk drive.

External drives make nice, fast external hot-standby backups.  They  
are lousy for making long-term backups that you can take offsite,  
though.  I can and have restored decade old 20/40GB and 40/80GB  
DLTtape IV cartridges, and have happily moved to a 220GB sDLT drive.

I've got a few 10-year-old SCSI drives that still work, but I've yet  
to find a commodity PATA IDE or SATA IDE brand of drives which make it  
much over 5 years, and a large percentage have issues trying to get  
much past 3 years of heavy usage.

> My experimentation isn't giving me good feelings about doing this  
> with FreeBSD. To start this off I installed an Adaptec USB 2.0  
> interface into my server. In the time that I've been working with it  
> I notice that it periodically bogs down and that it has the  
> potential to panic the kernel and cause a reboot. I recognize that  
> this could be:

While I really liked the AHA 1540/2940 controllers, I'm dubious about  
Adaptec's USB controllers.  I've got a few external drives with both  
USB2 and Firewire 400 interfaces, and they are faster and more  
reliable going over Firewire.  YMMV...

Regards,
-- 
-Chuck