G'day Eric,

How's the potential baby going?

I haven't seen you for quite a while now, mainly
because I've been buisy being a dad :-)

I've also been busy doing a total overhaul of minkirri,
which is still underway. I've been setting up a new
HDD with a complete debian installation, which I'm 
going to swap over when I've finaly got the thing fully
configured and tested. It's going to be hard to do this 
with a minimum of disruption.

Part of the upgrade will add new features, but mainly it
will fix heaps of old, insecure software that is long 
overdue. It should also be a neater system to maintain
and keep up to date (debian's ftp software update feature 
works quite nicely).

Another thing I have been thinking about again lately is
backups. I have compiled a fairly extensive list of 
removable media technology; everything including CD-R, 
CD-PD, MO, Travan, DAT, Zip, Jaz, etc. 

The main thing I have been looking at so far is $/Meg, 
including the cost of the drive. Obviously, this varies
depending on how many Meg you want, because the cost
of the drive gets "diluted" the more Meg you use. As a
benchmark, IDE HDD's cost about $0.11/M for 3.2G drives.
If you want I can send you a summary of what I've got.

In the end it comes down to a choice between the following;

Media size   I/F  cost  tape  $/Meg     8G  Notes
CD-R  650M  SCSI  $799   $10  $0.02  $0.10  write once only 
PDCD  650M  SCSI  $550   $60  $0.09  $0.16  reads CD's
TR-3  1.6G  FDD   $310   $65  $0.04  $0.08  Seagate Travan
TR-4  4.0G  IDE   $699   $80  $0.02  $0.11  Seagate Travan
TR-4  4.0G  SCSI  $880   $80  $0.02  $0.13  Seagate Travan
DSS1  2.0G  SCSI  $690   $30  $0.02  $0.10  DAT
DSS2  4.0G  SCSI  $990   $40  $0.01  $0.13  DAT

Note: most prices are taken from either the green-guide or
the laserbaud catalog. The PD drive price comes from an 
australian usenet add. The DSS prices are for second-hand 
drives. All capacitys quoted are un-compressed. The 8G column
is the $/Meg for 8G of storage, which is about what I would
need for 2 full backups.

I'm thinking of getting a CD-R drive regardless, so I can 
master my own CD's. Using CD-R as a backup medium would be
a pain, but if I've already got the drive... Also the blank
disks are really cheap, even if they are write once only.

The PD drives get a mention only because they are read-write,
can read CD's, and I saw a cheap price. Unfortunately they 
can't replace a CD-R drive because PD disks can't be read
with a normal CDROM. I don't think I'll get one, but I thought
you might be interested. BTW, the PD technology is what they
are planning to use for R/W DVD (AFAIK), but I wouldn't hold 
your breath waiting for them.

The Tr-3's look like a $$$ winner for me, but there are a few
things I don't like about them. They use a floppy drive 
interface (yuk). Apparently you can get an accelerator card to
connect them to, but they cost extra. They only hold 1.6G, which
would mean multiple volumes for me.

The Tr-4's solve the problems with the Tr-3's, but cost more. They
are available as either IDE or SCSI. The cost of IDE Tr-4 is about 
the same as DSS1 at this volume. The SCSI Tr-4 costs the same as 
DSS2.

DSS1 starts to be the cheapest $/Meg at volumes greater than 16G.
Unfortunatly DSS1 is only marginaly larger than Tr-3, so it is also 
hampered by the multi-volume problem. 

The DSS2 DAT's have the same capacity as Tr-4's but cost more than
the IDE Tr-4. They are, however, the same cost as the SCSI Tr-4,
so at this volume, if you want SCSI, Tr-4 and DAT are much of a 
muchness. Note that the lower media costs of DAT make DSS2 a clear
winner for 4.0G SCSI at volumes larger than 16G. However, the lower 
cost IDE Tr-4 is still the 4.0G winner up untill 24G.