From Terabyte Drives Make It Challenging To Create Regular Backups
Taking the time to make backups? Visit my Good bible books store to buy some good books to read...
Probably the worst part about making backups is babysitting the backup process. I like making backup DVDs with native files, that way the backups can be read on any machine without the need of backup software. But it takes a lot of effort to go through hundreds of gigabytes of directories, selecting 4GB chunks of stuff to put on DVDs one at a time. Then what if you run into oddly named files that are incompatible with DVDs (for example saved web pages that russian or chinese characters in the page title?) Thats why I created .ZIP files. Problem is, then you've got a single file that a single error can make all your files unreadable....
Using backup software might make this selection process more automatic, the backup software will automatically span disks at whatever interval you select. But how would the backup software deal with a multi-dvd backup set when one of the backup disks (or maybe the final disk which often is used to contain summary information about the whole backup set) happens to fail. Would it make all the other disks useless? This is something that would need to be carefully researched and tested. Allocate at least 3 or 4 hours for playing around with this scenario to decide if it is worth the risk.