Extremely high-volume data backup

[Mokele]

So, the lab I'm in recently had a scare with an external network HD that died and almost lost all of the data. Luckily, our tech folks could save it, but we may not be so lucky next time, which has prompted me to look into various backup options.

The problem: we have 3TB of data to back up, expanding rapidly. A good experiment day can generate 20-400 GB of data, depending on what we're doing, and overall I'd estimate we're generating about 1 TB a year.

So how to back it up? We're fine with only backing up every month or so, since most of the day-to-day work takes place on our laptops which have various typical-user backup systems; the large storage is mostly for extremely large raw data files.

So far, I've figured out that neither blu-ray writers nor online backups are feasible, simply due to the large volume of data rending each prohibitively expensive.

Naturally, I've been looking at tape drives. Are the tapes re-writable? How much re-writing can they take before degrading? Are such systems generally worth it, price-wise? Do they typically come with software that helps you, or are you pretty much on your own?

Are there any other systems for large-volume data backup?

[Yakk]

Amazon S3.
140$ / month for first TB
125$ / month for next 49 TB.

So you can get 3 TB for 4680$/year. Transfer in is free. Transfer out costs a little less than storage.

Maybe double that, and keep this month and last month "on file".

Note that on-site backups are not that strong a backup solution.

How cheap is your labour?

[yewbie]

So you can get 3 TB for 4680$/year. Transfer in is free. Transfer out costs a little less than storage.

That is if bandwidth is free
You way want to look at some NAS options.
example:
http://www.dell.com/us/enterprise/p/pow ... _err=noocs

[scarecrovv]

You generate 1TB per year, and you want to back up once per month? A straightforward and very robust way would be to buy enough hard drives to store your data twice over (should easily be possible for less than $500 max). Now copy your data onto both sets of drives, and put them in two seperate locations (say, your house, and the CEO's house, or wherever). Each month, bring one set of drives to work, and copy the data. Once this scheme is established, something would have to destroy hard drives at at least two locations nearly simultaneously (work, during a back up, and the storage place of the other backup copy) in order for you to lose your data. Expanding this to work with more data is easy. Just buy another two 1 TB hard drives every year.