Re: DVD writer for ontape device

T.Paakki wrote: > My company is trying to save a few dollars and we were hoping to > eliminate our offsite rotation procedure by sending a backup over the > network to a dvd burner. My question is, can a dvd writer be used as a > ontape TAPEDEV. assuming the drivers are all there and correct, would > this work? Has anyone tried this with a CD writer, it would be the > same basic concept. The DVD and CD writers tend to get antsy if the stream of data is not continuous -- I don't exactly how serious a problem that is, but the normal recommendation is to avoid doing anything much else on the system while writing the CD or DVD. So, you need to be confident that your archive will produce a good steady stream of data -- if you can't drive your tape drive continuously, I probably wouldn't try writing direct to the CD or DVD. The second issue would be a question of whether you need a ISO file system (with or without Rockridge extensions) on the device. If so, you probably need to back up to hard disk first, and then back the hard disk up to the DVD - which requires enough space on the disk where the burner is. No - I haven't tried it. So, no, I don't know whether I'm spouting nonsense. I'm just assembling bits and pieces of information and it seems to make sense - YMMV. -- Jonathan Leffler #include <disclaimer.h> Email: jleffler@earthlink.net, jleffler@us.ibm.com Guardian of DBD::Informix v2003.04 -- http://dbi.perl.org/