Rev opinions?

[Rob S]

Hi,

We're long time Zip users, and other than the odd clik of death, pretty happy
with reliabilty and longevity, and mostly with speed of backups to Zip.

We're looking for a backup solution for 2003 server, and I'm considering MO,
tape and Rev. I can get quite a good deal on Rev - 330 UKP for the drive, 5
disks and ARCserve. This is cheaper than a tape drive, and I would think much
faster. Any thoughts as to reliabilty, and how these disks last?

thanks


-Rob
robatwork at mail dot com

[Rick]

Post by Rob S
Hi,
We're long time Zip users, and other than the odd clik of death, pretty happy
with reliabilty and longevity, and mostly with speed of backups to Zip.
We're looking for a backup solution for 2003 server, and I'm considering MO,
tape and Rev. I can get quite a good deal on Rev - 330 UKP for the drive, 5
disks and ARCserve. This is cheaper than a tape drive, and I would think much
faster. Any thoughts as to reliabilty, and how these disks last?
thanks
-Rob
robatwork at mail dot com

Too expensive and proprietary - what else is there to say? If they drop
it from the market you're left with an expensive boondoggle with no
support for future OS releases and possibly no replacement drives or
disks in short order after that.

There are cheaper, non proprietary options:

http://reviews.cnet.com/Iomega_REV_35GB_90GB_SATA_Internal_Drive/4505-6407_7-31336292-2.html?tag=top

If you're already getting "good deals" on an overpriced, proprietary
storage system consider that a warning that it may not be on the market
much longer...

Iomega's last back up "solution", using removable hard drives, didn't
last a year because of problems with a limitation on the number of files
the system could back up, no matter what drive size was inserted into
it. (Iomega never fixed the problem.) And it was wickedly overpriced
compared to other swappable hard drive options already in the market
place.

MO is reliable and has long archival storage capability. DVD is cheaper
and has higher capacity than MO. Portable and/or removable hard drives
are dirt cheap compared to the costs of Rev. And none of those solutions
is proprietary and coming from a company with a "click death"
reputation.

I'd stay away. Especially over the proprietary matter.

Rick

[Box134]

Zip technology was the worst idea in computer history. I'm surprised, indeed
shocked, anyone still uses it. Iomega had a whole series of flaky ideas
after Zip too. Years ago newsgroups like this were chock full of people with
problems,obviously very few bother with it today because almost no one here.

To the OP: As far as backup goes, why not use hard drives? They go up to 250
GB today.

Post by Rick
Too expensive and proprietary - what else is there to say? If they drop
it from the market you're left with an expensive boondoggle with no
support for future OS releases and possibly no replacement drives or
disks in short order after that.

[Rob S]

On Wed, 31 Aug 2005 21:14:08 -0500, "Box134" <***@wooky.invalid> wrote:

-Zip technology was the worst idea in computer history. I'm surprised, indeed
-shocked, anyone still uses it.

You'd be surprised. We still use them, they're still ideal for what we need.

-To the OP: As far as backup goes, why not use hard drives? They go up to 250
-GB today.

Well yes. We only need 100Mb for backing up critical data. Hard drives aren't
easily removeable - we need to do regular (several times daily) backups quickly,
to removeable cheap media, which can be overwritten 100s of times, and addressed
directly as a drive letter. Zip fulfills all of these, HDD doesn't.
-
-"Rick" <***@rcn.com> wrote in message news:***@rcn.com...
->
-> Too expensive and proprietary - what else is there to say? If they drop
-> it from the market you're left with an expensive boondoggle with no
-> support for future OS releases and possibly no replacement drives or
-> disks in short order after that.

Could say the same about MO disks though.

I'm considering USB flash drives as an alternative, but there's a distinct lag
between inserting a new drive and it being available. Then there's the USB
factor - depending on which port the drive is in and if any others are being
used the drive letter may be variable. Not sure about longevity or how easily
the data is corrupted on one of these either - I know I've corrupted one by
removing it without doing the "safe removal" first - I don't trust my customers
to do this. Anyone know if there's a routine / command line to "safely remove F:
drive"?

rgds


-Rob
robatwork at mail dot com

[Rick]

Post by Rob S
-Zip technology was the worst idea in computer history. I'm surprised, indeed
-shocked, anyone still uses it.
You'd be surprised. We still use them, they're still ideal for what we need.
-To the OP: As far as backup goes, why not use hard drives? They go up to 250
-GB today.
Well yes. We only need 100Mb for backing up critical data. Hard drives aren't
easily removeable - we need to do regular (several times daily) backups quickly,
to removeable cheap media, which can be overwritten 100s of times, and addressed
directly as a drive letter. Zip fulfills all of these, HDD doesn't.
-
->
-> Too expensive and proprietary - what else is there to say? If they drop
-> it from the market you're left with an expensive boondoggle with no
-> support for future OS releases and possibly no replacement drives or
-> disks in short order after that.
Could say the same about MO disks though.

How so? The home market drives have been around since the late 80's'
(Steve Job's neXt computers used 230MB drives) and current 3.5" 2.3GB
drives are still read/write compatible with the original 128MB disks.
Fujitsu has released drivers for every OS update Mr. Bill has released
so far.

OTOH how many removeable disks/drives and backup concepts have come and
gone during this period? The only ones I suggested as an alternative to
a Rev drive are all non proprietary - MO disks included.

Post by Rob S
I'm considering USB flash drives as an alternative, but there's a distinct lag
between inserting a new drive and it being available. Then there's the USB
factor - depending on which port the drive is in and if any others are being
used the drive letter may be variable. Not sure about longevity or how easily
the data is corrupted on one of these either - I know I've corrupted one by
removing it without doing the "safe removal" first - I don't trust my customers
drive"?
rgds
-Rob
robatwork at mail dot com

[Rob S]

On Thu, 01 Sep 2005 09:51:48 -0400, Rick <***@rcn.com> wrote:

-How so? The home market drives have been around since the late 80's'
-(Steve Job's neXt computers used 230MB drives) and current 3.5" 2.3GB
-drives are still read/write compatible with the original 128MB disks.
-Fujitsu has released drivers for every OS update Mr. Bill has released
-so far.
-
-OTOH how many removeable disks/drives and backup concepts have come and
-gone during this period? The only ones I suggested as an alternative to
-a Rev drive are all non proprietary - MO disks included.

Perhaps non proprietary in theory, but if Fujitsu drop MO then it's as dead as
Zip/Rev if Iomega do likewise. I agree about the concepts coming and going - I
almost bought a Castlewood Orb on the strength of reviews. However Zip has
lasted the course and despite its shortcomings does what non-techincal people
need - fast and no brain copies.

-Rob
robatwork at mail dot com

[Rick]

Post by Rob S
-How so? The home market drives have been around since the late 80's'
-(Steve Job's neXt computers used 230MB drives) and current 3.5" 2.3GB
-drives are still read/write compatible with the original 128MB disks.
-Fujitsu has released drivers for every OS update Mr. Bill has released
-so far.
-
-OTOH how many removeable disks/drives and backup concepts have come and
-gone during this period? The only ones I suggested as an alternative to
-a Rev drive are all non proprietary - MO disks included.
Perhaps non proprietary in theory, but if Fujitsu drop MO then it's as dead as
Zip/Rev if Iomega do likewise. I agree about the concepts coming and going - I
almost bought a Castlewood Orb on the strength of reviews. However Zip has
lasted the course and despite its shortcomings does what non-techincal people
need - fast and no brain copies.
-Rob
robatwork at mail dot com

The point about MO drives being non proprietary - along with DVD and
external hard drives - is that you do have options. Fujitsu isn't the
sole manufacturer of MO drives. And, FWIW, they are plain
"read/write/erase" just like any other drive - no special software
required, no "close session" problems, etc.

After all this time - unless a real whopper of "something else" comes
along (after nearly 20 years nothing has yet) - I can't see this
technology going away. It's just too reliable, too embedded, and has
long shelf storage capabilities. And if a drive does go bad it can't
trash an entire disk of data in the process.
When you get a CAT scan or MRI done guess what that data is stored on?
Hint: It isn't an Iomega drive.

Rick

[Mistoffolees]

Rick wrote:

<<snipped>>

Post by Rick
When you get a CAT scan or MRI done guess what that data is stored on?
Hint: It isn't an Iomega drive.
Rick

It used to be an Iomega drive --- the Bernoulli and then the
ZIP and JAZ before the multiple-MO disk drives got certified.
And, tape cartridge has always been (and is) the secondary backup
although CD-R and DVD-R is being used more today for individual
patient information security (HIPPA).

[Box134]

Maybe you've considered this, but how about a USB 2 or Firewire external HD?
AFAIK, they are drive lettered, plug and play into any USB equipped box, and
portable.

Post by Rob S
-To the OP: As far as backup goes, why not use hard drives? They go up to 250
-GB today.
Well yes. We only need 100Mb for backing up critical data. Hard drives aren't
easily removeable - we need to do regular (several times daily) backups quickly,
to removeable cheap media, which can be overwritten 100s of times, and addressed
directly as a drive letter. Zip fulfills all of these, HDD doesn't.
-

[geothermal]

Post by Box134
Zip technology was the worst idea in computer history. I'm surprised, indeed
shocked, anyone still uses it.

I use zip for quick and easy backups every week. 100mb is all I need.
Floppys are too small and cdrs are too big. I do use cdrs as well for
photos but email fits on zip disks nicely. I have never gotten the
click of death on my 4 zip drives and none of my zip disks have become
unreadable. My sister somehow messed up her zip disk, but she
probably let her kids get food on the disk or something. (^: Yes,
cdrs are cheap and dvdrs hold a lot, but they can get scratched and
become unusable. And actually my cdburner just died. My zip drives
are twice as old as the cd burner and still working fine. Perhaps the
zip drives you used or tried were dropped repeatedly by FedEx or UPS
when shipped ? Who knows....

All I know is that I don't know anyone who uses rev or MO (never heard
of MO until today). All my friends and my mom have those necklace USB
drives or iPods. I am glad they got USB devices to store backups
actually... because I thought it was funny when I would get a cdr from
them that was only 9% full of photos or mp3s. (^:

Jonathan

[Geoff Lane]

Post by Rob S
Hi,
We're long time Zip users, and other than the odd clik of death,
pretty happy with reliabilty and longevity, and mostly with speed of
backups to Zip.
We're looking for a backup solution for 2003 server, and I'm
considering MO, tape and Rev. I can get quite a good deal on Rev - 330
UKP for the drive, 5 disks and ARCserve. This is cheaper than a tape
drive, and I would think much faster. Any thoughts as to reliabilty,
and how these disks last?

---

I have over 20GB that I've been backing up using a USB Rev with a 10-
media strategy since April. This takes about two hours to do a full
backup of five volumes of my server. FWIW, the backup software that
Iomega supplied was about as much use as a chocolate fireguard, and I
ended up using the freeware version of SyncBack (from
http://www.2BrightSparks.com/) with some batch scripting to tidy up the
backup media and to launch each of the five backup jobs.

The only problem that I've encountered is that Rev drive sometimes
doesn't recognise the media (happens 1% to 2% of the time). However, I
suspect that's because both the server and the Rev drive are powered up
24/7 because ejecting the media and rebooting the Rev drive has cured
this every time so far.

The reason why I went for Rev is the same as you suggest - it's much
cheaper than tape and the data transfer rates are more than adequate for
my needs. The 10-media strategy means that backing up to hard disk is a
non-starter.

As for reliability - in the Travan system that Rev has replaced, I needed
to replace the "daily" media ("Monday" through to "Friday") about every
six months. The Rev media has already given me that service. If Iomega's
claims are valid, the Rev media should prove more reliable than tape (but
I haven't been using the system long enough to know for sure).

I understand the risks to using a proprietary system - but my server also
uses disk mirroring, so Rev is not the only backup in place. Rev meets my
present needs, but YMMV.

HTH,

[Rob S]

On 15 Sep 2005 14:44:30 GMT, Geoff Lane <***@nospam.gjctech.co.uk> wrote:

-
-I understand the risks to using a proprietary system - but my server also
-uses disk mirroring, so Rev is not the only backup in place. Rev meets my
-present needs, but YMMV.
-
Cheers, Geoff

Am investigating USB flash drives as an alternative at the moment...


-Rob
robatwork at mail dot com