[tech] Burner vs. Diablo 2 (Re: [ucc] AGM Minutes)

[Nick Bannon]

On Sun, Mar 24, 2002 at 11:51:23PM +0800, David Manchester wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 24, 2002 at 11:34:07PM +0800, Nick Bannon wrote:
> > You're putting a lot of effort into finding things to object to. ::-(
[...]
> I would suggest that the UCC already has a CD burner.
[...]

So you think that a burner _is_ useful, you don't have a problem with
fast ones, generally speaking, but you simply don't think it's worth
money or effort to improve the current setup. Fairy nuff.

> I would suggest that its already perfectly adequate for backing up
> people's homedirectories.

Oh, it is, and more besides. You seem to have seized upon the idea of
home directory backups as the only "legitimate" use of the CD-R. Hence
anything that can handle a few tens of megs and be used once a month is
more than enough.

> I would suggest that people buy their own damned CD-R if they think
> that the UCC's is too slow.
> I don't think that having a CD-R in the clubroom is as much of a
> drawcard as the committee thought it would be when it waso originally
> purchased.

Our current CD-R was bought in late 1999 - years too late to be a
drawcard to speak of. It's been well worth its purchase price, though.

When you can get a drive that's six times faster for less than half the
price we paid, and 32x drives are commonplace, then (a) people
certainly do go and buy their own and (b) it's not suprising that they
claim that the UCC one is slow.

[...]
> Erm, how much stuff do you have in your home directory?
> This is beginning to read a lot more like your want to use the CD-R
> to create images of software you've downloaded.
> Why not do it at home?
[...]
> > As for the fast ethernet - do you prefer transferring ISO images' worth
> > of stuff over fast ethernet or standard ethernet?
> 
> Ah - here we go. Transferring ISO images.
> So, we're not really talking home backups, we're talking about making the
> latest Debian CD because we're too cheap to buy one.
> (Speaking of which, I must return your LSL CDs one day RSN).

It's not just about what I want, but if you have no need to use the
CD-R then I guess you don't mind talking about it either.

Certainly I want to transfer software. Typically by downloading it from
a campus or WAIX site, putting it on CD or HDD, and yes, taking it
home; whenever it's cheaper, more convenient, and/or faster than buying
it. FWIW, I'm also looking forward to buying an official Debian R3.0r0
(woody) set, OpenBSD etc.

> > For CD backup purposes, it's nice to make a partition's worth of images
> > and then burn them over a period of days, deleting as you go. Hence
> > 9GB. For tape backups it's nice to create archives on disk then stream
> > them to tape. Hence 9GB.
> 
> Ah, so if you ever intend to back anything up, make sure you have at least
> twice as much disk as you have data.
> Makes perfect sense to me... 

You're sounding sarcastic there, but for anything under a hundred gigs
or so it certainly is cheap, reliable and convenient to do so.
Temporary space as large as your largest data partition, compressed,
that is, as opposed to "twice as much".

It's handy if it _is_ twice as much, then you can do straightforward
full backups and restores in one go, and let's face it, incrementals
would be a right pain to deal with, here.

Given temporary space, we can drop in a simple, trustworthy backup
system like AMANDA, or custom scripts, or just the occasional manual
backup. It even means we have somewhere to restore to.

[...]
> No, we've got some tapes of dubious utility and condition.
> Please put some decent tapes in it. I didn't donate it to see it destroyed.
> Mmm. I'm glad I donated that DDS2 drive then. *sigh*

We've got some brand new tapes and I think a head cleaner, but I think
it's a bit unrealistic to expect that nothing else will ever be
permitted to come in contact with it.

I'm glad you donated it. On the downside it means that we can't whinge
and blame not having access to a tape drive for the lack of backups. On
the upside it means that someone finally got a burst of enthusiasm to
give it a shot. (Congrats, [AHC])

[...]
> > > I can't see how -any- of that makes a dedicated non-linux machine
> > > less useful for home directory backups.
> > 
> > I'm not sure why you think I would say such a thing, or what home
> > directory backups specifically have to do with it. It was a statement
> > about why UNIX machines are good for manipulating filesystems.
> 
> No, linux machines.

I specifically said "*nix'es". I don't know why you interpreted it that way.

> Your argument seemed to be that linux had interesting filesystems which
> made backups easier. I failed to find evidence for that.

It does. You can dd a file straight off (or onto) a backup media, in
all manner of formats, pipe it through all manner of things and
manipulate it in all manner of ways. Try that on Windows, NT or
otherwise.

[...]
> > (You might think that all CD-RW's are worthless, but it's been nice
> > to create a test disc, realise that it's broken, and try again
> > without throwing it away)
> 
> Seventy five cents.

For an extra 25 cents you can reuse it.

Archive copies are good too.

Nick.

-- 
   Nick Bannon   | "I made this letter longer than usual because
nick-sig at rcpt.to | I lack the time to make it shorter." - Pascal