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For about the same $$, you can get a nice DDS4 DAT drive, which does 20/40GB, and has super-cheap tapes - $17/ea at CDW, probably cheaper elsewhere..

4MB/s transfer speed isn't too shabby either for a cheap tape drive, and the system works perfectly under Linux with Arkeia, who have just released version 5 of a damn good enterprise-level backup system. Their current free-for-3-linux-server version (4.2) is not quite as good, but they've said version 5 free will be available soon.

Virus scanners don't do much, though, because most people never update them. Oh, they'll snag that virus that's been out for ten years now, but it's not going to get the new ones unless the user actively chooses to go download the updated files.

This is why I couldn't update my McAffee DAT files, so I contracted win32.CIH. McAffee scanner engine got infected also (Mcaffee.exe) and then I instructed it to scan and log all infected files, it infected all files it scanned. So the infected file-log included
C:\Program Files\McAffee\Vshield.exe and
C:\Program Files\Scan.exe

McAffee: luser. If McAffee try to sue me, I still have the old log saved. One week later I bought a 30GB DI30 Onstream backup drive. Good thing because when I installed Redhat 5 and used linux fdisk, I lost 50MB of mp3s which were the last thing I downloaded on my Windows 98 FAT32 partition. Man, it truncated the data on the FAT32 partition. My first experience with linux was BAD! I had to turn off sanity checking on the boot manager so it just "shut up and overwrite the damn boot sector and partition table with what was there previously, don't check anything". All programs should have an option where you can switch off sanity checking temporarily - otherwise the slightest unexpected problem and you're just stuck.

Mod this down, I have an alternate point of view - don't be frightened CBDTPA is not that bad, just a bit too all-encompassing at the moment but it'll be distilled down. As long as it doesnt kill free speech on the net I'm not OK with it but I accept that they have to protect their bottom line, especially with recession sending companies the same way as Enron. I could be wrong but let's try to analyse this logically.

The record and movie companies don't want computers to be used to rip one cd, and then distribute its contents worldwide. Let's look at the physical steps that make this possible:

1. The CD drive reads all CDs digitally, the laser scans in the CD tracks by tracking the reflection.
2. The firmware uses the ECC to reconstruct damaged data.
3. The data is translated to IDE/SCSI/USB, etc. bus format and transmitted to the IDE/SCSI controller, USB controller, etc. (the CD drive can have an optional Analogue2Digital converter for a headphone feed)
4. These ASIC controllers translate this data from controller format to PCI/Northbridge bus format where it's DMA'd to main memory.
5. App processes this data and stores it to HD or plays it or whatever.
6. Computer connects to a server or a P2P node (sorta lightweight server) over TCP/IP, any data stored on HD can be perfectly transferred over this link incoming or outgoing. App does not distinguish between native/downloaded data.

People have a reasonable right to break the law if they choose, so a slightly flawed system must be implemented. So how can the record companies attack this system? As far as I can see, these are their choices,

Solution 1 Obfuscation - Forget CDs, use Read-Only MiniDiscs instead, or any other proprietary format. Problem: it has to be converted to analogue in the earphone (even if this link is encrypted) which can be ripped. This creates extra trouble for the ripper, but for a song to be Napstered only 1 person has to set up the equipment to do this.

Solution 2 Taint the data - Make the data on the CD different like companies are doing now so that i doesn't meet the CD standard any more but CAN play on most dumb CD players, but not advanced CD players like computers CD drives and so can't be copied, it requires a dongle on the USB port to play.

Solution 3 Make CD writers illegal. If you really want to copy data or make a backup, then why use CDs which just happen to be compatible with CD drives? Use tape drives instead like Onstream, they're better. So you'll still be able to download mp3s, so what you can only play them on your computer, make mp3 players illegal, people should have proper retail CDs that they carry around.

Solution 4 Taint P2P systems - I THINK THIS WOULD BE GREAT! Force music transferred P2P clients to go over UDP, not TCP/IP, thus you get quality degradation in mp3s transferred, same as casette tapes with fair use that the industry asked for. Unfortunately rogue P2P like Freenet could subvert this, forcing CBDTPA to attack Cisco and router manufacturers via ISPs by ordering them to use layer 7 filtering on all traffic to search for mp3 (or whatever) headers. This would signal the end of the free Internet, a very sad day, but the law is *very* powerful

Solution 5 Taint the hardware - if none of the measures above works, then this is the nightmare scenario, can you make an x86 compatible processor in your garage? I laugh at all these pathetic people that say some company will not adhere to the standard, what commodity desktop PC processor manufacterer doesn't support big standards e.g. x86/G3/Sparc, Motorola 68000 or something. Developing an x86 processor on ASIC (otherwise like 1MHz), needs like $100million investment minimum. This provides precision targets for CBDTPA, they will be forced to provide DRM instructions on their processors otherwise they will not be allowed to import to USA, same as heroin. Same with chipset manufacturers, I've yet to see someone make a full-blown Northbridge out of 555 timers and BC108 transistors. They will be forced to provide encrypted tranmission to USB-DRM, IDE-DRM, etc. devices. New DRM drives will be incompatible with non-DRM chipsets and non-DRM processors cannot run on DRM chipsets. This won't necessarily be a difficult transition, the introduction of MMX, SiS motherboards with Northbridge/Southbridge on the same chip, the introduction of DDR hasn't caused any blue smoke and recalls larger than on the scale of 120GXP.
Only inserting a DRM-flagged CD into a DRM drive connected to a DRM chipset with a DRM processor will cause the DRM code in the OS to allow it to play but it would implant an encrypted CPU_ID or DRM_ID into the song every 5 seconds using steganography. The music industry will possess this database, and any music on Napster/Kazaa etc. could be tracked back to source and law enforcement would bust down their door. Solution 1/2/3/4 and CD levies are suddeny starting to sound good now aren't they?

Remember, hard drive, CD-writer, processor and chipset are things even the most advanced slashdot person can't build in his garage. In 10 years I can imagine an episode of Macguyver where Dr Evil encodes his plans on DRM, so RDA has to build a non-compliant HD using an egg, peanut, cassette tape and glue and a CD drive with a laser-pointer, mirror, precision motor, and writing drive firmware in C using RTlinux-on-FPGA. After all if bin Laden was using some network to blow stuff up, and there was no way to shut him out, then come on honestly I don't think that anyone would be surprised if the CIA implemented AI layer 7 recognition and blocking of Freenet encrypted packets at all ISP core routers.

I don't like it, but this is just the way it is. The again this could all be a crock of shit that came out of my imagination.

Put flame jacket on... Let's face facts, people. The fairest way for these moviemakers and musicians to get their royalties IS through levies on blank CD-R, CD-RW and DVD-R. I know for a fact that when the majority of people go out and buy a CD recorder, they're thinking "I need a place to put my pron, warez, music and video-CDs" NOT "I need 650Megs to make a backup of my system files because hard disks have a finite MTBF, viruses, etc.".

My computer repair consultant friend was telling me the vast majority of his clients have 50 CDRs of music, vid, pron but no backups of their data whatsoever. I'd guesstimate that 80% of all CD-Rs are used solely to store copyrighted music and vids. Come on people, the media is real cheap compared to tape streamers. Levy exemption can be given to schools, charities.

If levies aren't applied, then the industry will push for SSSCA on CPUs, RAM, Apps (maybe by implementing .NET-DRM by installing RIAA libraries that use encryption, and in Java (import java.DRM.memoryencryptedandprotectedMP3)) just off the top of my head. If you think this is *magically* not gonna happen then go talk to some lawyers and hear them drool on about "artist's property"... property this... property that, some lawyers that are my friends have been hostile to me for even suggesting that music isn't the artist's property they're not gonna change their minds on this. I think we all know that if DRM/SSSCA happens we'll be seeing performance drops by a factor of 10 on tomshardware, new computer will be slower than old ones for a long while. Plus the following 3 scenarios:

Badly flawed SSSCA/DRM - Makes computers slow and crash, and is useless.

Flawed/difficult-to-crack SSSCA/DRM - a hostile nation's intelligence services will come up with a way to circumvent the protection which will of course be real popular, and probably not open source into which they have implanted their own version of magic lantern trojan, ducking antivirus apps.

Virtually impossible to crack SSSCA/DRM - Code not our own any more, C and ASM no longer write to the CPU but instead a .NET-like IL or protected RAM areas only. Government can censor us, RIAA, MPAA can censor us, scientology can censor us, (insert your worst nightmare here) can censor us and bin Laden can send messages to his followers DRM-potected so no intelligence service can decrypt it.

Please people, cut the RIAA/MPAA just a little slack so that they don't bring the DOJ down on our heads, especially now. If they can take down Microsoft then they can definitely slow us down or take us down as well :-( And if you think Freenet can't be blocked then talk to those Cisco people about what you can really do with layer 4 switching.

Take flame jacket off arrrrggghhhhhh Ouch! Put flame jacket back on

http://www.onstream.com/news/index.html#200301
http://www.onstream.com/news/index.html#20072001

http://www.onstream.com/news/index.html#200301
http://www.onstream.com/news/index.html#20072001

I'm currently backing up about 12GB under Win2K using an Onstream 15/30GB tape drive. They sell a 25/50 model as well, but neither they nor anyone else sells anything bigger than that, for a price that a home user would find reasonable. The IDE version of the 15/30 model goes for about $200, and tapes are about $30-$35 each (I have three and cycle between them). Add a couple of hundred dollars for the 25/50 model, or for a SCSI model.

Given those prices, I've got a different plan for when I outgrow my tape drive. I'm thinking about just buying 3 hard drives (whatever I can get for $100 each; right now that's 40GB), a copy of DriveImage, and a removable drive bay (with three drive enclosures, one for each hard drive). When I want to back up my system, I'll pop in a hard drive, use DriveImage to make an image of my system and store it on the removable hard drive. Like with my tapes now, I'll cycle through the three hard drives.

That strategy will probably cost me about $400, which is less expensive than an Onstream 25/50 (plus three tapes). It will also hold more data than the Onstream, and will be substantially faster as well.

Onstream already sells 30 and 50 gigabyte solutions. And the disks are much cheaper.
View site here
I think everyone would be better off with an IDE drive and removable drive bay. You might not be able to drop it but most of us won't be seeing if our harddrives can walk down stairs, alone or in pairs.

I know the driver's beta, and the drives are cheap, but there is an Onstream 30/50G tape driver for Linux.

That said, I might note that DAT drives get tweeky after a while because of their mechanical complexity. (Think VCR, but tiny.) 4mm tapes are cheap, used drives can be a bargain, but don't bet the farm on one. Don't even use it until you get a cleaning tape! (I got mine at the University Bookstore in Seattle.)

QIC/Travan drives are way cheap, moderately reliable, Linux-supported but even the IDE ones are quite slow.

You are right on the money. This is an issue of data compression and data integrity. Digital Video uses a 5:1 compression scheme that does not have 100% data integrity. Drop-outs in tape cause data errors and the DV codec will approximate the missing bits and produce a decent picture, but it does not have perfect error correction required for data backups.

I do desktop video production and the OnStream tape drives work great, best bang-for-the-buck I've seen. $300 for a 30 GB internal IDE. They make SCSI models for servers too. Sweet.

- Eric Donaldson

...for good backups, kept offsite. As a rule of thumb you should always be able to recreate your system(s) as of yesterday given an OS install disk, a partition table, and backups. If you trust Travan, you can get drives for $400 and the media's pretty cheap too. Backups are a good idea anyways, for hardware and software failure reasons. Is anyone doing large scale backups using open source tools? Or is everyone using Veritas/Backup Exec?

I'm trying to decide what to go with. I'm tempted to wait until this fall and get one of these.

No Linux drivers yet, but those 30-50 Gb tape backups from OnStream look like they could be the ticket. Cheap, too.

Ah, you are correct. The information on their media (check out their ECC documentation) mislead me... it shows a pretty simple diagram illustrating an 8-track head.

Goto OnStream's web site and take a look at their 30GB and 50GB Desktop Digital Removable Drives. By far a better deal than this.