TidBITS: Backed Up Today?

Series: Backed Up Today?

Whether it's hourly or daily to DAT tape or disks, only you can protect your data!

Article 1 of 12 in series

01 Jun 1998 | Print

Have You Backed Up Today? Part 1

Recent popular discussions on the TidBITS Talk list have orbited around the issue of backing up data - what's the best media to use, how often should one back up, what software works well, if backup devices should be built into computers, and how iMac users will back up their dataShow full article

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In the first part of this article, I'll examine backup strategies and some topics to consider when formulating a backup plan. The next part of this article will discuss specific products you can use to back up your data.

Importance of Backing Up -- Most computer users don't back up their data. It's easy for people - especially novices - to believe that computers are infallible. You press a key, and they just work. (Or, for those in large organizations, if something goes wrong, you call the help desk and someone else fixes the problem.)

But those of us who have been around the block a few times know that's far from the truth. Files are deleted inadvertently, PowerBooks are dropped, hard disks fail, drinks are spilled, and of course, offices are burgled and houses burn down. Digital data stored on a disk is anything but secure, and pretending otherwise invites disaster. As an ad for Retrospect, the most popular Macintosh backup program, once said: "There are two types of people. Those who have lost data and those who will." That's truth in advertising.

<http://www.rocksoft.com/taobackup/>

Backup Strategies -- If we agree that everyone should back up their data, the next question is what they should back up. There are essentially two backup strategies, with a continuum of possibilities in between. One strategy says that when your hard disk fails, you want to be up and running as quickly as possible using a complete backup that's as recent as possible. Call this the Complete Backup strategy. The other strategy assumes only your data files are important, since you can always reload applications from master disks or download freeware and shareware applications. Call this the Minimal Backup strategy.

The two strategies require roughly the same amount of time. If you subscribe to the Complete Backup strategy, you spend more time dealing with your backup system on a regular basis, although automating the process makes it easier. You must feed disks or tapes to your backup device and verify that everything is working. That takes a fair amount of time up front, but recovering from a dead hard disk takes only a little more time than that required to read back your files.

In contrast, adherents of the Minimal Backup strategy spend less time up front - just the occasional copying of a file to floppy, perhaps - but may require days or even weeks to restore a system to full working order. The Minimal Backup strategy puts the burden on you to backup the appropriate files. Will you remember to back up every important file you modify or create? If not, you may be forced to rehash days of work. Also, you must specifically back up preferences and other out-of-the-way files: Remember that you've spent time configuring your applications (think keyboard shortcuts in Microsoft Word); setting up utilities and extensions; and creating scripts for programs like QuicKeys, OneClick, and KeyQuencer. What's more, finding and downloading new copies of freeware and shareware takes time and can prove difficult in the case of incremental updates to commercial programs or system software. Even locating serial numbers can take a surprising amount of time.

I'm strongly in favor of the Complete Backup strategy. I back up our internal machines to DAT tape using Retrospect every night (or in the case of PowerBooks and my infrequently used PC, whenever they turn on). I also use a pair of 2 GB hard disks in a RAID setup on my main machine, such that if one dies, the other will contain an exact duplicate of the data and instantly take over (in theory - it's hard to test). I use the RAID setup because I hate losing the important email that arrives between the time my Mac backs up and the time some sort of data loss occurs.

Why do I do this? Call me paranoid, but I can't guarantee I'll have time to spare when something goes wrong: Murphy's Law being what it is, it seems more likely that I'll need to start working as quickly as possible. You must decide how important your work is to you; that decision affects the type of hardware and software you choose, plus your overall backup strategy.

My primary weakness is that I don't have a solid offsite backup strategy. Geoff Duncan and I periodically trade DAT tapes, but if my house burned down, I'd be weeks or months out of date.

Backup Considerations -- You must keep a number of issues in mind when forming a coherent backup strategy.

Historical vs. working backups: Some people rely on working backups - recent exact duplicates of their hard disks (on another disk or Jaz cartridge, say). If this is what you do or are considering, think carefully. What happens if an important file is irretrievably corrupted and you don't notice immediately? With a working backup, the backup probably contains the corrupted file. If you use a historical backup - one that doesn't erase previous versions of files - you can go back to the most recent version of the file that's not corrupted. Of course, historical backups require more backup media, which increases costs.
Double-duty storage devices: Many people like backing up their hard disks to Jaz cartridges, for example, because they can use the Jaz drive for other things as well. I did this years ago with a 44 MB SyQuest drive. Although this strategy works, I don't recommend it for two reasons. First, there's always the temptation to use the backup cartridges for normal storage if you need some space quickly. At that point, the backup cartridge is no longer just a backup, but also contains unique data. Second, using the Jaz drive in other ways probably indicates you have other cartridges containing unique data. How do you intend to back up that data, or is it essentially worthless to you? I went through all this with my SyQuest, and I found that a dedicated DAT drive for backups doesn't raise these thorny problems.
Media capacity: When thinking about backup devices, think about the amount of data the device or its storage media can hold. I use a DAT drive that can hold about 2.6 GB on a single 90 meter tape. However, I have about 10 GB of online storage between all of my machines. The data is not all in use, and many files are redundant (Retrospect doesn't back up multiple copies), but a single tape won't quite hold everything, which forces me to use multiple tape sets. The smaller the media capacity, the more media you'll need, which drives up costs. Of course, the smaller the media capacity, the harder it will be to set up an unattended backup system. In an ideal world, you could do a full backup to a single tape or cartridge, then do incremental backups to another tape or disk for several months before needing to add additional members to that backup set.
Backup device cost: Most people worry about the cost of a backup device, whether it's a SyJet, a DAT drive, or whatever. In my mind, and in part because I use my Macintoshes for business purposes, that cost isn't particularly relevant, since it's a one-time cost and the longer you put it off, the more likely you are to lose data worth far more than the backup device. Costs can range from about $150 for a Zip drive to $750 for a fast and capacious DAT drive. Don't skimp on the device or buy something weird because it's cheap - you don't want the device to be a weak link.
Backup device and media format longevity: When thinking about backup devices, think conformity. You don't want to have years of backups and archives in a format that can't be easily accessed if your drive dies. For instance, it's reportedly becoming difficult to obtain replacement or repaired mechanisms for SyQuest 270 MB drives from manufacturers, and there are numerous older media formats that have already gone the way of the dodo.
Backup media cost: A 90 meter DAT tape holds about 2.6 GB and costs between $5 and $10. In contrast, a 2 GB Jaz disk costs about $150. If Johnny backs up 10 GB to DAT and Sally backs up 10 GB to Jaz, who will pay more money, even taking the cost of the backup device into account? (The answer is left as an exercise for the reader.) Seriously: security costs money. Make sure to take both backup device and media cost into account.
Media reliability: Not all backup media is created equal, and corrupted backups are worse than no backups at all. From what I can tell, most backup media used today should last at least 4 years, with expectations of 10 to 30 years being fairly reasonable. CD-ROMs may last longer, though estimates of CD-R life spans are similar to the 10-year life span of magnetic tapes. Of more concern is how you treat your media - in short, it should be stored in a cool, dry, clean place, used in clean drives, and handled with care (don't toss that cartridge into your bag!). The better you treat your media, the less likely you are to have trouble.

<http://www.phlab.missouri.edu/~ccgreg/ tapes.html>
<http://www.nml.org/MediaStability/ QuestionsAndAnswers/>

Backup verification: How do you know if one of your backup tapes has gone bad, or even if your backup contains the correct data? Verification. You must check the contents of your backup every now and then to make sure it's working properly. I occasionally pull a few files from my backup sets just to check their integrity. Retrospect users should enable its verification pass, especially when backing up to tape. Backups take much longer but the safety is well worth it.
Backup redundancy: One of the best ways of reducing your exposure to media failure is to have multiple sets of backup media. That way, even if one set fails, you can still fall back on another set. Even if the alternate set is out of date, having older files is better than having no files. For instance, I currently rotate my weekly backups through three sets of backup tapes, two of which I reuse. When the third one reaches a certain number of tapes, I archive it and start a new set.
Automation: For most people, the main obstacle to backing up is that it's a boring task they must do regularly. That's why most backup programs offer a variety of scripting and automation features that take most of the drudgery out of backing up. I strongly recommend using these automation features - you'll feel guilty if you lose a lot of work because you procrastinated about doing backups.
Storage location: What happens if your office is vandalized or a disaster befalls your home? Earthquakes, fires, tornadoes, and break-ins all happen. How seriously you consider offsite backup locations depends on the importance of your data. If you work in an office, taking a backup home each week is easy, and you can just as easily leave a home backup in your desk at work. If you work at home, consider giving backups to a friend you see regularly. For local backup media, consider a small, fireproof safe. However, make sure it's designed to protect magnetic media in case of a fire - temperatures hot enough to destroy a backup tape might not be sufficient to ignite paper, which is what "fireproof" generally means. TidBITS sponsor APS Technologies has several media vaults that protect magnetic media from temperatures up to 1,550 degrees Fahrenheit for 30 to 60 minutes at prices ranging from $150 to $620.
Archiving: Although most people believe backups protect files they're working on, a good backup strategy can also protect old files you need to keep, but don't need on your hard disk (like graphics, scans, or video). Ideally, a backup system should address the need to archive important, unchanging files. Some people use Retrospect to back up to tape on a daily basis but archive data on CD-R on a quarterly or yearly basis.

From Strategies to Solutions -- For most people, massive data loss is something that only happens to someone else. But if you've ever been forced to attempt the resurrection of a lost report or Quicken data file, you probably don't want to get burned again. In the second part of this article, I'll explore many of the backup hardware and software options available.

Article 2 of 12 in series

08 Jun 1998 | Print

Have You Backed Up Today? Part 2

by Adam C. Engst

In TidBITS-432 last week, I talked about the importance of backing up and offered some food for thought when considering different methods of safeguarding your important (and not-so-important) dataShow full article

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<http://db.tidbits.com/article/04917>

Backup Devices -- Any storage device can act as a backup device, but that doesn't mean that you should rely on just any storage device. Here are the main possibilities for everyday Mac users; I won't discuss expensive high-end stuff like 8 mm tape, digital linear tape (DLT), or autoloaders. Dantz Development has a Web page of similar information, including a cost-comparison table.

<http://www.dantz.com/backup_hardware/ hoptions.html>

Floppy disk: Get real. Macs come with multi-gigabyte hard disks, making floppy backups extremely unrealistic. If you're a Minimal Backup zealot, you can back up a few files to floppy, but you'll spend a long time recovering the rest of your disk when you have problems. Plus, floppies are notoriously unreliable - some may work for years, others may fail while you carry them across the room.
Second hard disk: Hard disks are primarily useful as working backups that contain exact duplicates of original data. It's hard to do historical backups to hard disk, and it's expensive to create multiple backup sets. Two hard disks are unlikely to fail simultaneously, but both could be damaged by a serious power surge and are vulnerable to theft or disaster. I can't recommend a second hard disk as a sole backup device.
Zip drive: Zip drives are inexpensive, with prices under $150, and cartridges prices around $10. But, Zip cartridges hold only 100 MB, which means you might need 20 or more to back up a 2 GB drive. In addition, Zip media and drive reliability aren't necessarily great. I see Zip disks as modern-day floppies, and don't trust them with truly important data.
Magneto-optical: Magneto-optical drives come in sizes from 128 MB to 2.6 GB; prices on the current generation of 640 MB and 2.6 GB drives are about $400 and $1,700. Cartridges are fairly inexpensive at about $35 for 640 MB and $70 for 2.6 GB. Reliability reports are good, which places magneto-optical drives above other removable cartridge drives in my mind, although the smaller capacity of the less expensive drives might prove frustrating. They also aren't as popular as other types of removable media drives, which limits their utility if you want to use the cartridges for file transfer as well.
Large removable media drives: Removable cartridge drives such as the Jaz and SyJet are based on the same rigid disk media used in hard disks and can store 1 GB or more per cartridge. These popular backup devices cost from $250 to $600, depending on capacity, but cartridges are expensive, running between $75 and $150. Although the media has the capacity to work well for backup, the cost is higher than I like, and there was a significant disagreement on TidBITS Talk with regard to reliability.

<http://db.tidbits.com/article/04626>

Travan tape drive: I'm not particularly familiar with tape drives based on Travan technology - there are several products with different specs, and modern drives can read some older QIC (quarter-inch cartridge) tape formats. The general word is that they're quite inexpensive ($300 to $600 for a drive, with tapes running about $35 to $40) and capacious, although relatively slow, which isn't a serious problem for unattended backup. Tapes hold either 4 GB or 10 GB uncompressed, and you can generally assume at least 3:2 compression ratios, depending on your data.
DAT tape drive: DAT drives are among the more expensive options, with drive costs ranging from $600 to $1,000. There are a few different DAT (also known as DDS) flavors that provide additional storage capacity, speed, and hardware-based data compression. Tapes are cheap, running between $5 and $15 each, and capacities range from 2.6 GB to 12 GB. Tape reliability is good but not great, but the low prices encourage multiple backup sets and lessen exposure to bad media. Many DAT drives come bundled with Retrospect, whereas most other storage devices don't include backup software. I've used an APS HyperDAT for nightly backups for five years now, and I've come to prefer and recommend a tape solution.
CD-R: With the cost of CD recorders and recordable CD media dropping, CD-R has become a viable backup option. Drives cost between $350 and $600, depending on speed, and recordable CDs are as low as $2 to $3 each for 650 MB. Some people use a dual-media strategy - DAT tape for daily backups and CD-R for periodic archives. Keep in mind that you need backup software for the CD-R drive - standard CD burning software like Toast wastes space for each backup session. In contrast, true backup software like Retrospect or Retrospect Express can avoid that waste by using a technique called packet-recording. However, Retrospect may not support all older CD-R drives - check Dantz's Backup Mechanism Compatibility List or a similar list for other programs.

<http://www.dantz.com/dantz_products/cdr.html>

Backup Software -- Backups don't just happen on their own, although some people feel they should. After you've purchased and set up a backup device, you must have software to handle the details of copying your files. Since at its heart, all a backup program does is copy files, there are a variety of different programs that you could conceivably use for backup. They fall into three different categories: true backup programs, file copying utilities, and file synchronization utilities.

I don't consider a program to be a true backup program unless backup is its primary function. It should be able to perform full and incremental (only changed files) backups to a wide variety of media. You should be able to schedule backups, create multiple historical backup sets, and run backups unattended. High-end backup programs can back up over networks and work with different platforms. True backup programs may not a use Finder-readable format for backups, which enables them to compress and encrypt backups as well.

File copying and file synchronization utilities are fairly similar but differ in focus. Utilities like SpeedDoubler, the now-defunct CopyDoubler, and others focus primarily on enhancing the process of copying files in the Finder. These utilities may offer features for copying only changed files and scheduling copies, but they lack the features and the depth of a true backup program. One interesting entry in this category is DeskTape from Optima Technologies, which enables you to mount a DAT tape on the desktop like any other disk, albeit a tremendously slow one.

<http://www.connectix.com/html/speeddoubler.html>
<http://www.optimatech.com/DTape.html>

File synchronization utilities like Qdea's Synchronize Pro are designed to synchronize files between hard disks, often a desktop Mac and a PowerBook, but they usually claim backup capabilities as well. They can copy only changed files and can sometimes be automated. Unfortunately, they too lack the depth of true backup programs, generally being unable to use multiple backup sets, keep historical backups, or compress data.

<http://www.qdea.com/syncpro.html>

Both types of utilities work well for creating simple working backups, but to my mind, relying on working backups to a single device is asking for trouble. To make such a strategy safe, you should back up regularly to multiple disks, include all appropriate files, and rotate backup sets manually such that you have some level of historical backup. It's not impossible to do this by hand, but it requires thought and regular effort.

Several mainstream true backup programs are available, though many others, such as Redux and FastBack, have disappeared over time.

Retrospect: Dantz Development is one of the oldest Mac developers, which is impressive considering that the company has only ever had a few products, all devoted to backup. Their flagship program, the powerful Retrospect 4.0, offers automation, compression, support for most backup devices, speedy network backup via Retrospect Clients (even over TCP/IP), support for Windows 95 and NT clients (PC Week even recommended using Retrospect on a Mac to back up Windows machines), flexibility for multiple backup sets on different automated schedules, a backup server that watches for the appearance of PowerBooks, and archiving features. Although Retrospect provides an EasyScript feature that walks you through creating backup scripts to automate backups, I've found that you're better off thinking carefully and crafting a custom backup strategy. I won't pretend that's easy - Retrospect's flexibility can make its interface rather abstract - but it has worked better for me than the generic strategy and schedule provided by EasyScript. I've used Retrospect for years, and once you understand its mindset, it's a great tool. It's also bundled with many tape drives, making it the easiest option for many people. If you must buy it, Retrospect 4.0 costs about $150 and a 5-user pack of Retrospect Clients is about $100.

<http://www.dantz.com/dantz_products/retro.html>
<http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/content/pcwk/1432/ pcwk0001.html>

Retrospect Express: Retrospect Express is a new product from Dantz that's aimed at individual users, rather than people backing up multiple Macs over a network. Retrospect Express includes most of Retrospect's feature set, but with the notable exception of tape drive support - Retrospect Express assumes you'll use removable media drives, including CD-R. If you must buy a backup program and you plan to back up to removable media, the $49.95 Retrospect Express represents an excellent value. It lacks a paper manual, but Dantz did an excellent job on the PDF version on the CD-ROM. Interestingly, the Retrospect Express CD-ROM contains English, French, and German versions of the software and the manual.

<http://db.tidbits.com/article/04833>
<http://www.dantz.com/dantz_products/ express.html>

DiskFit Direct/DiskFit Pro: These programs were Dantz's personal backup entries before Retrospect Express. They're very simple, lack flexibility, and don't support volumes with more than 32,000 files. They are compatible with Mac OS 8.1 otherwise, with the exception of the DiskFit Reminder utility. Although you can still find them, Dantz has said that they will be retired in July - after ten years. If you use either, they'll probably work for some time yet, but I can't recommend buying them.

<http://www.dantz.com/dantz_products/dfd.html>
<http://www.dantz.com/dantz_products/dfp.html>

NovaMac: NovaStor's NovaMac claims a large feature set, including support for a variety of networks, unattended backup, support for numerous tape drives, and password protection. Comments I received indicated that early versions may have been difficult to figure out, possibly because NovaMac comes from NovaStor, a PC company for whom NovaMac is their sole Mac product. One reader said that although he didn't consider NovaMac quite up to Retrospect, he felt it was a good program, especially for people in cross-platform environments who - for whatever reason - didn't want to use Retrospect. NovaMac may be bundled with some tape drives. Otherwise, it appears to cost $49.50, although it's difficult to separate it from the PC versions on either NovaStor's site or in other online stores.

<http://www.novastor.com/backup/datasheets/ nmac.html>

CharisMac Backup Mastery: CharisMac's Backup Mastery claims to support CD-R, most SCSI tape drives, and removable media. It offers backup of selected files, unattended backup, scheduled backup, and more. It costs $129.95 and has a competitive upgrade offer of $39.95. For those interested in backing up to tape drives, Backup Mastery is one of only three choices, along with Retrospect and NovaMac.

<http://www.charismac.com/backup_mastery.html>

DataSaver -- Software Architects' $79.95 DataSaver 1.1 is a simple backup program for use with removable media. It provides filters for selecting specific types of files; supports multiple disk backups when using removable media; and estimates the required number of disks, total backup time, and the time before the next disk swap will be necessary.

<http://www.softarch.com/us/products.services/ spec.sheets/DataSaver.ss.html>

Personal Backup: Highware's $49 Personal Backup is also a basic backup utility for use with removable media. It can perform incremental backups, operate in the background and backup on a schedule. Interestingly, Personal Backup is implemented as a control panel, and includes file synchronization and keystroke recording features. A two-week demo, in English or French, is available from the Highware Web site (275K download).

<http://www.highware.com/main-pbu.html>

A few backup programs for other platforms, such as Windows NT, can back up Mac clients, including Cheyenne ARCserve, Seagate BackupExec, and IBM's ADSTAR Distributed Storage Manager. I mention these primarily in case anyone needs to convince a Windows NT-specific network administrator to back up a Mac on the network.

<http://www.cheyenne.com/Product-Info/windowsnt/ arcserve65-nt-menu.html>
<http://www.seagatesoftware.com/bewinnt/>
<http://www.storage.ibm.com/software/adsm/ adsmhome.htm>

More Backup Thoughts -- The third part of this series will talk briefly about shareware backup programs, plus look at a new Internet backup service for the Mac and services you can turn to in case of disaster.

Article 3 of 12 in series

15 Jun 1998 | Print

Have You Backed Up Today? Part 3

by Adam C. Engst

In the previous installments of this series on backup, I looked at issues surrounding backup as well as at backup hardware and software that you might want to useShow full article

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In the previous installments of this series on backup, I looked at issues surrounding backup as well as at backup hardware and software that you might want to use. We're nearing the end of this topic, but a few important points remain to be made. Also, be sure to read this issue's review of BackJack, the first Macintosh Internet backup service.

<http://db.tidbits.com/series/1041>

Backup Shareware -- You may have noticed that last week I discussed only commercial software. I'm normally a huge supporter of freeware and shareware software, but in this case, I have to come down on the side of sticking with commercial software. Here's why.

First, if you go to the effort of backing up your data, you should be assured that you'll be able to access your data in case of problems with the backup, the software, or even your backup device. You need someone to call in case technical support is the key to recovering files essential to your project. Although many shareware authors offer great support via email, it's unusual for them to provide telephone support, which could prove necessary.

Second, the entire point of backups is that they be accessible at some random point in the future. That means you need to know that your backup program will be updated to work under future versions of the Mac OS. Even if the backup program stores files in normal Finder-readable format (so recovery shouldn't be a problem), being forced to switch backup programs just as you're upgrading to a new version of the operating system can be nerve-wracking - that's one of the times you're most likely to need good backups.

Third and finally, all the freeware and shareware programs I've seen fall into either the file copying or file synchronization categories outlined in the second part of this article, with all the related advantages and disadvantages mentioned there.

That said, if you wish to rely on a freeware or shareware solution, I recommend sticking with a program that's updated frequently and that stores files in normal Finder-readable format. Also, think carefully about your backup strategy so you have multiple backup sets and some level of historical backup. Here are the main programs I've seen that claim to back up files, listed alphabetically with version number, download size, price, and a URL to additional information and download links.

Drag 'N Back 2.7 (242K, $50)

<http://www6.zdnet.com/cgi-bin/texis/swlib/mac/ infomac.html?fcode=MC10262>

MacUpdate 4.0b7 (625K, $20)

<ftp://mirrors.aol.com/pub/info-mac/disk/mac- update-40b7.hqx>

NetBackup 1.0 (273K, $20)

<http://www.pe.net/~bsheafer/svsoftware.html>

Onyx 1.0b2 (63K, $10)

<http://infinitysolutions.ml.org/www/onyx.html>

SimpleBackup 1.6 (24K, free)

<http://www.acts.org/roland/thanks/>

SmartSaver 3.2 (149K, $25)

<http://www6.zdnet.com/cgi-bin/texis/swlib/mac/ infomac.html?fcode=MC10472>

SwitchBack 2.6 (272K, $30)

<ftp://mirrors.aol.com/pub/info-mac/disk/switch -back-26.hqx>

Synk 2.4.2 (621K, $10)

<ftp://mirrors.aol.com/pub/info-mac/disk/synk- 242.hqx>

Off-site Storage Companies -- If you're concerned about your off-site backup strategy, you might look into a service that stores physical backups off-site. These companies often handle pickup and delivery, providing schedules and materials to simplify an off-site backup strategy. They're undoubtedly not cheap, but in business situations where data is all-important, they may be worth the cost. You can find several of them in Yahoo's Disaster Recovery category.

<http://www.yahoo.com/Business_and_Economy/ Companies/Computers/Services/Disaster_ Recovery/>

Catastrophic Data Loss -- If you find yourself in a catastrophic data loss situation, consider checking out the data recovery services offered by DriveSavers, a company that has developed proprietary software and techniques to recover data even from truly mangled disks that have been in fires, under tires, or at the bottom of the Amazon river. DriveSavers recently noted that they're now confident of being able to recover Macintosh Extended Format (MEF, or HFS Plus) disks. There are other recovery companies - I recommend making sure they're experts with Macintosh drive formats before working with them.

<http://www.drivesavers.com/>
<http://www.yahoo.com/Business_and_Economy/ Companies/Computers/Services/Data_ Recovery/>

Whatever You Do -- I realize I've come down hard on the side of spending a decent amount of money to put together a coherent backup strategy based on a dedicated backup device, multiple tapes or cartridges, and commercial backup software. That's because I consider the work I do on my Macs to be important, and I feel that spending money up front is more efficient than wasting time and money when the inevitable data loss happens. I like the peace of mind that comes from knowing I've put together a solid backup system.

If you feel that your files aren't particularly important or that you can afford to spend a few days restoring your Mac to working order, feel free to go with a less expensive and comprehensive backup strategy. Just keep in mind the advice in this series, and whatever you do, remember this: No one ever regrets backing up, only not backing up.

Article 4 of 12 in series

15 Jun 1998 | Print

Internet Backup via BackJack

by Adam C. Engst

With the growth of the Internet over the last few years, there's been added interest in backing up data over the Internet. It's been on my mind for a long time - as far back as 1992, I wrote an April Fools article in TidBITS-114 about a fictional company doing something along these lines. Fast forward to 1998, and several companies have products that enable computer users to back up files over an Internet connectionShow full article

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<http://db.tidbits.com/article/03157>

Fast forward to 1998, and several companies have products that enable computer users to back up files over an Internet connection. They don't back up everything, only selected files, and files are encrypted for security reasons. Restoration happens over the Internet, or, if the amount of data is too large, via a CD-R sent to you overnight. Internet-based backup is perfect for a few important files, especially if you aren't comfortable with your offsite backup situation. On the downside, many people on TidBITS Talk said they were uncomfortable relying solely on encryption for security, and to my mind, an Internet backup strategy falls into the Minimal Backup camp, making it most useful as an off-site adjunct to a more comprehensive backup strategy.

<http://www.yahoo.com/Business_and_Economy/ Companies/Computers/Services/Backup/>

One-Eyed Jacks -- The only Internet backup service currently available for Macintosh users is the just-released BackJack from Synectics, although I've heard rumblings about several other services that might appear soon. I've been playing with BackJack for a while now, and it has proved easy to set up and reliable so far.

<http://www.backjack.com/>
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/04926>

BackJack's interface provides simple backup and recovery capabilities, which contributes to its ease-of-use, but the first version of the software lacks flexibility. It's clearly a first effort, albeit a functional one, and leaves room for future enhancement. For instance, to back up files, you select the folder that contains them, but there's no way to exclude specific files in that folder, and if you create a folder of aliases, BackJack doesn't resolve them and back up their originals. The company said it plans to address these issues soon in revisions to the free software.

BackJack does sport many basic backup features. You can create multiple sets of folders to back up, and each set can contain multiple folders. Each backup set can have a different automatic backup schedule, and BackJack has successfully kicked in every night and backed up my changed files. BackJack logs everything it does, plus it sends you an email report after each session. You can set how large the log grows, and other options enable you to determine how many revisions of a document are kept online and how long backed up files are kept online after being deleted locally. This functionality is tremendously important, since it enables you to revert to earlier versions of files and to recover if you delete a file without realizing.

The actual backup process is a bit slow, in part because of the transmission over the Internet (I have a 56K frame relay connection; those people with dialup Internet connections will obviously see somewhat slower transmission performance, plus they'll have to let BackJack dial out automatically). Speed isn't much of an issue though, since backups will usually take place unattended in the middle of the night. Another performance hit comes from the fact that BackJack compresses files using a built-in version of Aladdin's StuffIt technology and then encrypts them using a 128-bit key that you generate during setup. No one has broken the 128-bit encryption scheme BackJack uses, so security is high. However, be careful to store the extra copy of your encryption key off-site on a floppy; in case of a disaster that wipes out your computer, you won't be able to retrieve and decrypt your files without a copy of that key. The BackJack folks are investigating ways of avoiding that situation without compromising the security of the system.

Restoring a file from your backup over the Internet is easy - the Recover window provides a hierarchical view of your stored files, including any earlier revisions. The same interface enables you to enter dates for specific files to be deleted if you want to remove them from your backup. Although BackJack enables you to mark and unmark all the files, it lacks any way to retrieve just the latest versions of files or to find and mark specific ones through a search mechanism. If you back up a relatively small number of files that won't prove problematic, but it might with hundreds of files. The company has plans to offer a service that sends you all files on CD-R if necessary to avoid downloading all your data in the event of a complete recovery.

BackJack's documentation is available online and can be downloaded in HTML format. It's quite well done, although relatively basic, if mainly because the BackJack application doesn't have much depth. The documentation is good about answering the "Why" questions that always arise.

Ante Up -- Pricing is a little complicated, since BackJack charges based on the amount of data you back up, the time of day you send it, and how much storage space you use on the BackJack servers. There's a $17.50 one-time setup fee, a $3.50 monthly administration fee, plus data transfer and storage fees. BackJack's transfer fees are 14 cents per megabyte from 11 PM to 9 AM and 35 cents per megabyte from 9 AM to 11 PM. (Times are always your local time.) In addition, BackJack charges less than half a cent ($.0035) per megabyte per day for storage. Recovering data is always free, and you can use BackJack on multiple computers with same account for no additional charge.

<http://www.backjack.com/pricing.html>

You'll usually want to schedule BackJack to back up in the middle of the night, and you should be careful with what you choose to back up, avoiding applications and system files and, for instance, Web browser cache files if you plan to back up your Preferences folder.

In a sample situation where a user backs up 75 MB initially and then about 1 MB per day afterwards, the first month (including the setup fee) would cost about $45 and each subsequent month about $17. That pricing is in line with two popular PC Internet backup services: Atrieva charges $14.95 per month for up to two computers, and Connected Online Backup charges $19.95 per month per computer for up to 10 machines. Neither charges transfer or storage fees. They're probably betting that most people don't have the bandwidth to back up large quantities of data, plus they're counting on the fact most people won't back up Windows system files or applications because it's so difficult to restore them to a working state without doing a clean install.

<http://www.atrieva.com/>
<http://www.connected.com/>

In response to my comments about pricing, the BackJack folks noted that they felt uncomfortable using a flat rate pricing model that would in essence charge low-end users more to subsidize the high-end users who use far more of the system's capacity. That's a laudable goal, and I hope the pricing model doesn't dissuade people who are uncomfortable not knowing precisely how much they'd be paying.

These concerns aside, I'm quite impressed with BackJack as a first effort, and it's well worth a look for anyone interested in Internet backup, particularly those people planning on buying standalone iMacs immediately when they're released.

<http://www.apple.com/imac/>

Article 5 of 12 in series

22 Jun 1998 | Print

Have You Backed Up Today? Part 4

by Adam C. Engst

TidBITS readers have both offered useful additional information and raised a number of interesting questions concerning the issues that swirl around backup strategies, as discussed in the previous three parts of this series. My Backup Strategy -- A number of people asked me to explain the specifics behind my backup strategy, hoping that they could apply my rationale to their situationShow full article

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<http://db.tidbits.com/series/1041>

My Backup Strategy -- A number of people asked me to explain the specifics behind my backup strategy, hoping that they could apply my rationale to their situation. So, here are the details. I back up to DAT tape using Retrospect 4.0 and an old APS HyperDAT drive hooked to a Centris 660AV that currently does nothing else other than run Apple's LaserWriter Bridge software. Before the 660AV, I used an SE/30 that had a much slower SCSI bus, and also ran numerous other applications. I've found that Retrospect coexists nicely with most types of applications, but not mail servers, which can lose data when Retrospect monopolizes the CPU during backup.

We have two types of machines - machines that are available on the network most days and which are backed up every night by a Retrospect script, and machines that appear on the network on a sporadic basis like PowerBooks and the PC, which back up whenever they appear via a Retrospect Backup Server script. Automated nightly backups make for minimal intrusion and work, since they free me from having to monitor the process, or even notice it. At the same time, nightly backups provide a high level of protection should we lose anything ranging from a single file to an entire hard disk.

To spread out exposure to problems, I back up to three sets of tapes, named Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus (hey, I have a degree in Classics, I'm allowed). The current tape in each set lives in the drive for a week, and every Monday morning I eject the current set and replace it with the next one, moving up in the alphabet. I used to use default names like "Nightly Backup A," but that became confusing when I had multiple tapes in the set, resulting in tape names like "Nightly Backup A 2" and it became even worse when I archived a set with a New backup in Retrospect, thus ending up with "Nightly Backup A [001] 2." I think better with real names, so I switched to the names of the Greek gods.

Retrospect's EasyScript feature wanted to set me up with a rotation schedule that swapped tapes on Fridays. However, I'm most likely to be "at work" on Mondays, since that's when we publish TidBITS. So I changed the schedule to swap tapes on Mondays. Make sure rotation schedules work for you or you may find yourself not backing up because you didn't have the right tape inserted. So, every Monday morning when I start working, the first thing I do is swap the backup tape set. I'm working on a system of storing the previous set off-site and rotating the off-site backups as well.

The trickiest part of my backup strategy involved dealing with tapes filling up. Retrospect can script Full backups (which erase the contents of that set and start over) or New backups (which keep the contents of that set and start over), but I couldn't figure out a schedule for those that made sense. Plus, I hate wasting space, so I couldn't imagine starting a New backup if I had several gigabytes left on the current tape, just because the New backup script had kicked in. So, I came up with a strategy that requires a little more manual intervention but better fits my style of working.

The Hades set contains three tapes. When it fills up and Retrospect asks for a fourth tape, I cancel that request and manually do a Full backup to reset the contents of that backup set. The Poseidon tape set uses a similar strategy, but it contains four tapes and is reset when Retrospect asks for a fifth tape. Otherwise, Hades and Poseidon would probably run out of space at roughly the same time, which could force me to go back two weeks to the Zeus set to recover a file that had been deleted just before the reset action took place. Finally, the Zeus set is allowed to contain five tapes, but when Retrospect asks for the sixth tape, I cancel the request and manually perform a New backup to completely new tapes, archiving the previous five tapes in the Zeus set and giving it five more. The filled-up Zeus archival tapes live off-site as well.

If a Full backup of Hades or Poseidon would erase a few days of backups, I give them one more tape and wait to perform the Full backup until they come up in the rotation again. At that point, I get the extra tape back again - it's just temporary space.

This system works well for me, since I end up with nightly backups of all files, three different sets of tapes in case one (or even two) fails, a set of tapes that can be stored off-site, and archival sets of tapes that can be stored off-site. And, the beauty of resetting two of the three sets when they fill up is that I don't have to buy nearly as many DAT tapes as I would otherwise. Of course, I do have to swap in new tapes for the Hades and Poseidon sets every year or so, but that's a minor liability.

DAT Longevity -- Several people asked about the number of times one should use a DAT tape, since a variety of advice seems to float around in the ether. I forwarded the question to Craig Isaacs of Dantz Development and Paul McGraw of APS for their input. Craig said that Dantz recommends sticking with the manufacturers' recommendations, but on a more realistic note, commented that the decision runs along with the entire backup strategy decision - you must decide how much you wish to spend for differing levels of protection. For instance, some large companies never reuse media, preferring to do complete backups daily and taking the previous day's backup off-site forever. These organizations feel that millions of dollars of data is well worth a few thousand dollars of backup media. Obviously individuals would rarely use such a strategy but still shouldn't assume a DAT tape will work forever in constant use.

Paul McGraw's comments were more concrete. He felt that 30 to 50 sessions is a totally reasonable expectation, and he has used DAT tapes personally for hundreds of sessions without failure. Paul qualified his comments, saying that it's probably a good idea to retire a tape after it's been used for 90 days, no matter what. In addition, media vendors say that new tapes leave more residue on the tape drive's heads, so you should run a cleaning tape after using a new tape for the first time. Finally, Paul suggested that if you see frequent media failures, you should look into switching media suppliers, and if that doesn't help, switch mechanisms or even media types.

My advice, particularly for those trying to keep costs down, is to limit your exposure to the possibility of any given tape (or any other form of removable media) going bad. Do this by maintaining multiple backup sets that rotate on a relatively frequent basis. For instance, if you have three backup sets that rotate every day, even if one fails, the previous set is never more than a day old. In addition, I think retiring tapes periodically is a great way to create archival backups - although you might not trust a tape after hundreds of sessions of use, if you retire it in working order, it's likely to be accessible for years, should you need to recover a file from it.

DAT Tape Usage -- An interesting fact arose from one of the responses I received from a previous article. A reader wrote to say that he'd been encouraged to buy a 9 GB hard disk in addition to a 12 GB Sony DAT drive. The reason given was that his 10 Mbps Ethernet network probably wasn't fast enough for Retrospect to use the tapes fully, and by backing up first to the 9 GB hard disk and then backing that up to the DAT tape, there wouldn't be any wasted space on the DAT tapes. It seems that if Retrospect can't get a stream of data coming in fast enough to write to the tape, the DAT drive itself writes what are called "pad blocks" until more data is available. Otherwise, the backup would take far longer, because the DAT drive would have to stop, rewind, and locate the last write point after each time Retrospect's buffer empties out.

Although true, this design decision on the part of DAT drive engineers (a trade-off for speed versus tape capacity) probably doesn't affect you unless you back up to or from an incredibly slow computer, or using LocalTalk. In addition, DAT tapes are cheap and reusable, so if some space is wasted invisibly in this fashion, it's unlikely to be worth the cost and effort of putting a hard disk in the middle of the system.

DAT Drive Pricing -- The perennial complaint arose in relation to DAT drives: why are PC DAT drives cheaper than Mac DAT drives? According to Paul McGraw at APS, they're not - at least when you make a fair and accurate comparison. When you compare a PC DAT drive in an external enclosure, without software, to one of equal performance on the Mac (the same mechanism models mostly work on both platforms), the price is virtually the same. Macs generally don't support internal DAT drives, so there is a nearly $100 difference between an internal DAT for PCs and an external DAT for the Mac. The second factor in the cost is that of software bundled with the drive. Low-end software in the PC world is likely to be cheaper than the high-end Retrospect, which is the most common program in the Mac world for backing up to DAT. When high-end PC backup programs are bundled, costs are comparable. Finally, there are undoubtedly some economies of scale involved in selling more units into the market.

In short, the answer relates to difficult or impossible internal installation, and a substantial difference in the cost of what is considered "acceptable" backup software. When you compare apples to apples (in this case, high-performance SCSI DAT drives bundled with high-end software), the prices are generally quite comparable.

Many people confuse tape drives in general with DAT drives. There are numerous different tape technologies, some of which provide extremely low cost (and low performance) PC tape drives. Relatively few QIC (quarter-inch cartridge) tape drives are available for the Macintosh, and those that are use SCSI instead of the cheaper IDE or floppy interfaces used by the PC versions. In those cases, the PC tape drives are both more numerous and quite a bit cheaper.

8mm Tape -- Several readers wrote to chide me for claiming that 8mm tape drives were only expensive, high-end solutions. Although that does seem to be true of most 8mm drives, the Exabyte 8700LT stores up to 10 GB (compressed) on a single tape and costs about $650 (8mm drives don't seem to be as easy to find as DAT drives - I was directed to Computer Discount Warehouse). Reliability and speed are reportedly good, and media cost is as low as $6 per tape. It's worth a look.

<http://www.exabyte.com/products/8mm/8700lt/>
<http://www.cdw.com/product/default.asp? EDC=69081>

Redux Redux -- One of the more popular backup programs of yesteryear, Redux, is about to make a comeback. A new company called Redux Software has been created specifically to develop and support Redux. The company is working on Redux 2.6, which is an update to the current 2.5.1, and after that they will start version 3.0. We'll be sure to note when Redux 2.6 ships.

<http://www.reduxsw.com/>

Retrospect Express Availability and Features -- Craig Isaacs of Dantz Development has confirmed that Retrospect Express is available only through Dantz until 01-Jul-98. That's coming up soon, but some people have been confused by mail order vendors claiming the program hadn't shipped yet. It has shipped, just not to distributors yet. In addition, I've had a number of discussions with people who believe Retrospect Express is missing particular features, such as the capability to back up multiple volumes to a second hard disk. Although it does lack some of Retrospect's high-end features (like tape drive support, security, Backup Server capabilities, network backup capabilities, and most notably custom Selectors for flexible file selection criteria), in each case so far the requested features have been present and documented in the manual.

<http://www.dantz.com/dantz_products/ express.html>
<http://www.dantz.com/store.html>

Auto Backups -- Several people suggested using the trunk of your car as an off-site backup location that's easier to get to than a safe-deposit box. Although it's certainly easy, I would be extremely leery of storing magnetic media in a car. It depends on where you live, but here in Seattle, the inside of cars can get quite cold and damp in the winter, and extremely hot in the summer sun. It's possible that CD-Rs might not be as susceptible to environmental damage as tapes or removable cartridges, but frankly, I don't think it's worth the chance. Stick with storing off-site backups in a climate-controlled location like an office or, ideally, a safe-deposit box.

QuickBack -- I missed a freeware backup program in the last installment in this series. Jacques Cornell <jacques@white.plala.or.jp> recommends the freeware QuickBack 1.9.3 by PopChar author Gunther Blaschek. It appears to be a true backup program, though it has a rather annoyingly modal interface and hasn't been updated in over two years.

<http://infosoft.soft.uni-linz.ac.at/Info/ MacSoftware.html#QuickBack>

Backup Book -- Marc Shipman-Mueller <msmueller@arri.com> wrote to recommend The Complete Guide to Mac Backup Management, a $34.95 book by Tom Dell and Dorian J. Cougias.

<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ ISBN=0121925625/tidbitselectro00A/>

Lock that Door! Finally, Alastair Rankine <alastair@cia.com.au> comments that it's worth thinking about the physical security of your backup media and hardware. Although it's probably not a major concern for individuals, businesses should treat backups as valuable data and keep them in appropriately inaccessible places. In addition, at least Retrospect enables you to set security levels on your backups. You can choose Password Only (no encryption), SimpleCrypt (fast encryption), or DES (strong, slow encryption). Retrospect has other security options as well, such as password protecting access to the program and encrypting data while it transfers from a Retrospect Client to the backup server. If security is paramount for you, make sure your backup software and overall strategy support your security needs.

Article 6 of 12 in series

14 Dec 1998 | Print

Internet Backup Strategies

by Adam C. Engst

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With the recent release of Dantz Development's Internet-savvy Retrospect Express 4.1, which joins Retrospect 4.1 and the BackJack Internet backup service from Synectics Business Solutions, I think it's safe to say that Internet backup has become a field - a step up from a trend, more stable than a fad, and nowhere near as big as an industry. I've been using these programs for a while now and have come up with some suggestions for how you can integrate Internet backup into your backup strategy. What will work best for you relates to how much storage space you have (or are willing to pay for) and how fast your Internet connection is.

<http://www.dantz.com/dantz_products/prod_intros /express4_1_intro.html>
<http://www.dantz.com/dantz_products/prod_intros /retro4_1_intro.html>
<http://www.backjack.com/>

Advantages of Internet Backup -- First off, let's briefly look at the advantages of backing up to a server on the Internet.

No need for additional hardware (although, unless Internet backup constitutes your entire backup strategy, you still need appropriate hardware for local backups).
Guaranteed off-site backup, which protects your files in case of fire, burglary, or natural disaster.
Integrated backup strategy for businesses with off-site employees.
Access to your encrypted backups wherever you can access the Internet (this might be useful to heavy travelers).

The main reasons suggested on TidBITS Talk for why people have decided against Internet backup are concerns about the reliability and longevity of an Internet backup service, the safety of sensitive information, and the length of time necessary to back up a large hard disk even over a DSL or ISDN connection.

<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tlkthrd=500>

Several Megabytes Available -- Most Internet service providers offer a few megabytes of disk space with your Internet account. Often people use this space for publishing Web pages. As long as this storage space is accessible via FTP, you can use Retrospect 4.1 or Retrospect Express 4.1 to back up a small number of important files to your Internet account. In this case, backing up only a few files via the Internet cannot form your entire backup strategy; you must perform backups to removable media as well or risk losing everything other than a few of your most important files. In addition, some ISPs don't back up their FTP servers, so they prefer that you don't rely on them for secure data storage.

Retrospect and Retrospect Express try to be too helpful in this situation. By default, both add new versions of files to your backup set, which is great with removable media, but which can quickly fill up a small FTP disk space allocation. My solution is to have Retrospect Express perform a Full Backup every other night. In Retrospect parlance, a Full Backup resets the storage set, replacing the previous contents. So, by doing a Full Backup every other night, I ensure that my backup set cannot grow significantly larger as I modify files. The drawback is that I may have only the most recent version of each file backed up. You can check the amount of space used by viewing the StorageSet summary in either program.

50 to 100 MB Available -- Let's assume that you have more disk space available. It's possible your business provides it, your ISP doesn't care how much you use within reason, or you're paying a backup service like BackJack or one of the Dantz Certified Internet Backup Sites (currently including Committed to Memory, Recover-iT, and Portland Communications, which is located in Europe). The fee-based Internet backup sites all currently charge by the amount of disk space you use; although the details vary, the rates are generally comparable. You can estimate between $15 and $25 per month to store 100 MB.

<http://www.dantz.com/sp/ftpproviders.html>

For most people, that much space will be roomy enough to store backups of all of your documents, preferences, macros, email, and other files that you can't easily reinstall. There's less need to back up large system files or applications, since you should have master disks. You could rely on Internet backup entirely in this situation, which makes sense for iMac users or people who don't create large files. In short, this level of Internet backup is perfect for most home users, who should look at either BackJack or Retrospect Express 4.1 (the full-fledged Retrospect is overkill).

The choice between Retrospect Express and BackJack is one of trade-offs. Retrospect Express is inexpensive and much more flexible and powerful than BackJack, but BackJack is free and easier to use because of its lack of selection flexibility. In Retrospect Express, you'll want to perform a Normal Backup most nights, but once every week or two, you should perform a Full Backup to reset the storage set to use less space. BackJack handles this situation more elegantly, since you can set how many versions of a file to keep and how many days to keep a file after you've deleted it. These BackJack features, in combination with built-in StuffIt compression (which is probably tighter than Retrospect Express's compression), help reduce the amount of data you're storing.

If you ever want to back up to removable media as well, Retrospect Express is a better choice, since BackJack can only back up via the Internet. But if you're hyper-concerned about the security of your data, BackJack's 128-bit encryption is significantly stronger than Retrospect Express's SimpleCrypt encryption.

You need at least a fast modem connection to the Internet since transferring this much data takes time, and you definitely want to run backups at night.

Unlimited Space Available -- Corporate users or people at large universities may have access to FTP servers with essentially unlimited amounts of space. In this case, you probably also have at least a 10 Mbps Ethernet connection to the FTP server, if not a 100 Mbps connection. The combination of massive space and fast network connection (anything less than a 1.54 Mbps T1 connection probably wouldn't work) means you could back up everything to the FTP server via Retrospect or Retrospect Express. In essence, the Internet backup set would act just like a tape backup set, and it would make a great off-site backup for a student (dissertations and similarly important projects should be backed up in numerous different places). You probably wouldn't want to pay to use BackJack or one of the Internet backup services because of the high cost.

In an organization large enough to have this kind of FTP space available, there might already be a centralized backup procedure in place that could include Internet backup. For instance, it might make sense to back up an entire department to a large FTP server using Retrospect, because Retrospect is smart about storing only a single copy of identical files on multiple machines. Thus, adding more computers to the backup (Retrospect can also back up Windows machines) might not significantly increase the size of the storage set if everyone uses similar applications.

Even if your files are being backed up already, it might not happen every night due to the sheer volume of data that needs to be backed up. In that case - especially if you don't trust the person or group doing the backups - you might consider your own Internet backup as a secondary backup, perhaps handling only files you can't easily reinstall on your own. An added advantage of your own backup is that it may be easier to recover a file from it than from a centralized backup.

Give It a Try -- I think Internet backup is here to stay. It might be a way for some home and iMac users to avoid buying an additional backup device and dealing with physical media, or it might prove to be excellent secondary backup of important files; either way, Macintosh users can now add it to their backup strategies. For a more detailed discussion of backing up in general, check out my article series on backups.

<http://db.tidbits.com/series/1041>

Article 7 of 12 in series

26 Feb 2001 | Print

Ecrix's VXA-1 Tape Drive: Big Fast Backups

by Adam C. Engst

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Huge hard disks are a boon in today's world of MP3s and QuickTime movies, but they've made reliable backup strategies harder to develop. Back when I bought my first 2.6 GB DAT drive, I'd just added my first 1 GB hard disk to my main Mac, and no other Mac on my network had over 700 MB online. With Retrospect's intelligent snapshot approach to backup and incremental backups, a couple of tapes would last for months. Now it takes me 8 DAT tapes just to do the first backup, and I can go only about a month before I need to recycle a 13-tape backup set. Worse, because of the swapping necessary to write and verify 8 tapes, it takes four or five days to finish that initial backup, during which time the work I do remains largely unprotected.

So when the folks at Ecrix (pronounced "ecree") offered to send me a review unit of their new VXA-1 tape drive, I jumped at the chance, although I warned them that a serious review of a backup device would take a long time, since the true test of a backup device is how it performs under real world conditions. I've now been using a VXA-1 tape drive for about eight months, and I think I understand it well.

<http://www.ecrix.com/>

Big and Fast -- Ecrix makes much of their tape technology and how it supposedly makes the special tapes written by the VXA-1 more reliable and durable than other approaches. Although I've had no data loss problems, I can't comment on the super durability, since I wasn't about to dip my test tapes in boiling coffee or freezing water. What sets the VXA-1 apart in my eyes is that its tapes hold a lot of data, and it can read and write at blinding speeds.

<http://www.ecrix.com/tour/>
<http://www.ecrix.com/extreme/overview.cfm>

Ecrix claims that their V17 tapes hold up to 66 GB of data, though that's with hardware compression. They also claim a 6 MB per second (360 MB per minute) write speed, and that number also takes hardware compression into account. It's generally more useful to discuss backup devices in terms of native speeds and capacities, which would be 33 GB of data and 3 MB per second (180 MB per minute), not because you won't do somewhat better with compression, but because you'll be happier if the drive exceeds your expectations rather than falling short.

For instance, when I paired the SCSI version of the VXA-1 with an Adaptec 29160 SCSI card in my 450 MHz Power Mac G4, Retrospect reported write speeds around 250 MB per minute. That's well above the 180 MB per minute that you'd see without compression, but far below the 360 MB per minute Ecrix claims. Throughout this article, I'll use the native speed and capacity, and when comparing the VXA-1 with other tape drives, you should make sure to do the same for an accurate comparison.

Based purely on specs, the VXA-1 may sound like a solid backup device - big, fast, and reliable. That's essentially my conclusion, but I want to focus first on the negatives, since although the VXA-1 is very good, it's not perfect, and what I've learned may be of use to anyone considering these extremely attractive backup devices.

Speed Caveats -- You may be salivating at the idea of backing up 250 MB per minute, but you won't see speeds like that in most situations.

You must connect the VXA-1 to a fast Mac. I first used it on an old Power Mac 7100, but even backups of the local hard disk proceeded at only about 30 MB per minute. Plus, I had to order a special cable to connect the 68-pin high-density connectors on the VXA-1 to the 25-pin SCSI port on the 7100. Even a less expensive Adaptec 2930 SCSI card in my Power Mac G4 turned in about 200 MB per minute. So if you like to dedicate an older Mac to backup tasks, you might want to reconsider that with a VXA-1. (Ecrix has recently released a FireWire version of the drive that reportedly sports similar performance to the SCSI version in conjunction with a fast SCSI card.)

The VXA-1 itself is seldom the performance bottleneck. If you're backing up other machines across a network, performance suffers significantly based on the network speed and the speed of the Mac being backed up. The faster Macs on our network, my PowerBook G3 and Tonya's iBook, reach respective speeds of about 55 MB per minute (transferring over 10 Mbps wired Ethernet) and 40 MB per minute (over our 11 Mbps AirPort wireless network). Our Performa 6400 manages only about 30 MB per minute over Ethernet, and the aged SE/30 hovers around 5 MB per minute. So, although you can't blame the VXA-1 for slow network backup performance, it's a fact of life you can fix only by increasing the speed of your network or the Macs being backed up. And realistically, it's mostly an issue on initial backups, since incremental backups copy much less data per session.

Capacity Caveats -- There are also some caveats when considering that 33 GB capacity. First off, Ecrix actually sells tapes in three different capacities. The $30 V6 cartridge has a 12 GB native capacity. The $45 V10 cartridge checks in at 20 GB native, and the $80 V17 cartridges that I've been using have the longest tape length, so they provide 33 GB native. The 20 GB V10 is the most economical per gigabyte, by a bit, but I'd happily pay a little more for the V17's extra capacity.

<http://www.ecrix.com/products/VXAtape-desc.cfm>

As I noted before, almost all tape drives claim a 2:1 ratio for their hardware compression. The claim is relatively accurate for standard types of documents, but many of the largest files we work with today (MP3s, QuickTime movies, and JPEG graphics) are already internally compressed. No lossless compression routine such as those used in backup devices or programs like Aladdin's StuffIt Deluxe can achieve a 2:1 compression ratio on such files, and in the worst case, the files may even grow slightly.

But there's yet another problem that can suck capacity from your backup tapes. For optimal use of space with any tape drive, you never want the drive to wait for data from the computer. Most tape drives write "pad blocks" while waiting since it's faster for a drive to write pad blocks rather than stop, rewind, reposition, spin back up to speed, and start writing again. The VXA-1 is different: it does stop the tape motion while waiting for data, but it must still write a "splice point" between the old and new data, and the accumulation of many splice points reduces capacity. So if you're using a slow Mac or backing up over a network, you're likely wasting some space.

I ran into a combination of these two issues in spades. Since most of my backups run over 10 Mbps Ethernet, they're not very speedy, and until I moved the VXA-1 from the Power Mac 7100 to my Power Mac G4, nothing was backing up at much over 25 MB per minute. Worse, about 9 GB of the files on our Performa 6400 file server are MP3s. Needless to say, I was unwittingly wasting considerable tape space and was miffed when my tapes only held about 29 GB. It wasn't until Ecrix's tech support explained things that I realized how badly I'd been using the VXA-1.

I've come up with two solutions. First, I'm going to stop backing up my MP3s to tape and instead burn them to CD-R, which will provide some level of backup and let me play MP3s in a Philips CD-MP3 player a friend gave us for Christmas. Second, you can use an Ecrix program called VXATool to change some of the configuration settings within the VXA-1. One of these options sets the drive to favor capacity over speed (supposedly making a V17 tape hold its full 33 GB versus only 20 GB when speed is favored), and I've just switched to that mode. It reduced the speed of an initial backup of my Power Mac G4's hard disk from 250 MB per minute down to 135 MB per minute, but the throughput of subsequent incremental backups and for all my network volumes was unaffected. I haven't been using it long enough to determine how much more data I'll really get on each tape. Unfortunately, VXATool is a primitive command-line program; the command to favor capacity is "1 capacity y".

Other Considerations -- I was initially quite negative about moving the VXA-1 from the 7100 in the server room to the G4 at my desk because I like having Retrospect's backup server scripts running constantly and I don't like listening to unnecessary fans. Retrospect turned out not to be a problem, since it politely launches itself every night at 11 PM (thanks to the Retro.Startup extension), backs up everything on the network, and doesn't complain when I quit it in the morning after a glance to verify the backups completed successfully. More important, the VXA-1's fan, although relatively loud, turns on only when necessary, so it's mostly silent.

The physical design of the VXA-1 is quite large, though reasonably attractive, and it can sit on either its bottom or on its side. Four front panel lights flash in a variety of ways and colors to communicate numerous bits of feedback. Unfortunately, the key to what those lights mean exists only in Ecrix's PDF-based documentation (even though they include a printed Getting Started card).

I've had to interpret the feedback lights twice. The first time it informed me that I needed to clean the drive with the special $35 cleaning tape. The second was more serious - the first unit I received, an early production model, stopped working and announced its troubles via the feedback l

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Ecrix's VXA-1 Tape Drive: Big Fast Backups