Depends on what you want your backup system to do for you.  The three
major contenders are removable drives like the Zip drive, CD-RW and
tape.

With the larger size of hard drives these days, Zip disks, even at 250MB
are too small, medium expense per disk ($8-10) but many needed - too
many disk swaps to backup a lot of data and they are not very fast.  Can
only transport disks to another system with a Zip drive ($80-160) or
requires moving the drive with you.  On the positive side, it is usually
quite fast to recover a small number of files.  Backups can be done in
background.   Most backup programs will use removable drives.

CD-RWs are bigger and faster and cheaper ($1-3)  but still may require
backing up chunks that fit on a CD (640MB) or swapping a few disks.
Usually quite fast to recover a small number of files due to the speed
and size of the disk.  Most systems these days have CD-ROM drives but
many older CD-ROMs will not read CD-RWs.  Backups usually require
dedicated time due to chance of causing problems with writing disk
caused by multi-tasking.  CD-RWs are more versitile and can be used for
many other purposes besides backups.  Backup programs that will use
CD-RW are not common.

Tape is expensive ($20 per tape and $100 and up for drive) but you may
only need one tape because they will hold several gigabyte each.
Cheaper tape drives are very slow - faster drives are very expensive.
Tape drives are like Zip drives in that not many people have them and
you would need to move the drive with you to move files to another
system.  Backups are easily and usually done in background or can be
scheduled to run at night.  Almost all backup programs will use tape of
one kind or another.

I use tape because of the amount of data that can be written without
swapping and because of scheduled night-time backups.

----- Original Message -----
From: Timchenko Maxim <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, March 29, 2000 4:34 AM
Subject: Re: [PCBUILD] Zip vs. CD for backups.


> For regular backups, I consider CD-REwriter more appropriate.
> CDs are universally recognized and media cost is significantly lower,
even
> for the CD-RWs.
>
>
> On Tue, 28 Mar 2000, David Jonathan Justman wrote:
>
> > I'm picking out a new system.  When I told the salesman that I
wanted
> > a Zip drive for backups, he recommended a CD writer instead.  What
> > does everyone here think?  What are the pros and cons of each?
>

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