oh, fucky.

After waiting five hours for tape #1 to be written and verified, I see:

    Total bytes written: 10723840000 (10GB, 991kB/s)
    dump started at Wed Sep 25 04:20:44 PDT 2002,
        finished at Wed Sep 25 07:18:23 PDT 2002

    verifying archive...
    tar -f /dev/tape --blocking-factor=200 --diff

    c/01/mp3/babes_in_toyland/spanking_machine/10-dust_cake_boy.mp3: Contents differ
    c/01/mp3/belly/star/06-witch.mp3: Contents differ
    c/01/mp3/coil/the_snow_ep/05-answers_come_in_dreams_ii.mp3: Contents differ

    verify finished at Wed Sep 25 10:16:32 PDT 2002

[ LJ Poll 62964 ]

Tags: ,

23 Responses:

  1. bdu says:

    it's three fsking files, just keep the backup and make a note of which files are corrupt so you can re-rip those if you restore from the backup. It will take far less time to re-rip those 3 files than to rewrite the tape.

  2. grahams says:

    My vote? Don't fuck around with "The Snow". =)

  3. ex_shaggy817 says:

    c) Buy a cheap 150 or an LX 50, and Just Know(tm) that it will work...

  4. knowbuddy says:

    Why not just backup to CDR(W)? Yes, it takes more effort, although not necessarily more time. With the right backup software, the extra effort dissolves down to "throw a new disc in the machine each 15 minutes". (To be honest, though, I dunno if there is a *nix solution, but I can't imagine it would be hard to cook one up.) And you get that nice "I can throw these in any computer/car stereo anywhere" feeling. I have spindles and spindles of CDRs of MP3s, some of which have been around since '96-ish without any degradation.

    • jwz says:
      • 2,500 CDs, or
      • 250 CD-Rs, or
      • 7 DATs

      I'd love to be doing this to DVD-R instead, but I'm not gonna buy a DVD drive until I've seen some pretty hard evidence that it's possible to write consumer-DVD-player-compatible DVDs from Linux. It might be possible, with some unknown combination of hardware and software, but I haven't yet heard of anyone actually having done it.

      • icis_machine says:

        i wouldn't be surprised if a driver for the sony dru500 isn't around the corner already...
        of course i won't get getting mine until october apparently.

        • jwz says:

          Writing DATs on Linux has been "just around the corner" for 3+ years already.

          • icis_machine says:

            the drive i suggested before does have 'linux'(whatever that means) support and i know that HP's SureStor dat40x6I tape autoloader claims it supports red hat.

            other than that, i'm just gonna cower in the corner out of my own naivete.

          • bdu says:

            everything on linux is conceivably "just around the corner", since all it takes is sufficient geekery to get interested. Of course they may never actually take up the cause...

          • ch says:

            i used to write dat's all the time on linux. still do on occassion. via scsi, of course.

            i'm using dlt now. great shit, 'cept they look like fucking tk50's.

            • jwz says:

              Duh, I meant to say "Writing DVDs on Linux." I am writing DATs on Linux.

            • yakko says:

              at 35GB native, I'd convert from DDS3 to DLT7000 if I had the money and space to store the tapes...

              but right now, I can fit a whole month's worth of backups (full and incr) on one DDS3 cart, with tons of room left over. I get to thank things like NFS for keeping /home small.

      • fzou says:

        I've never been to DNA, but I'm sure such a contraption would be a worthy centre piece of any club. And of course it's cost effective and feasible etc etc.

  5. jcurious says:

    if your going to go through the trouble of verifying your backup... then somewhere in your mind you must have known that this was possible.. go ahead and do the backup over..

    sleep well

  6. brad says:

    10 GB is $10 ... why the hell did you waste 3 hours (soon to be 6 hours?) when you could've just bought a backup hard-drive?

    You can write to a HD much faster than 991 kB/s.

    But I didn't read that last long computer rant, so you probably have some reason, but really you should just build yourself a cheap-o file server to do backups onto. Put a 3ware card and a bunch of IDE disks in it, then keep a few dated snapshots around.

    • jwz says:

      You are correct in your assumption that the post you didn't read explains why I'm still using tapes!

      • brad says:

        Okay, I went and read it now and I must say, you seem to have the worst luck with hardware. I don't think this is the first time I've read you bitch about computers not working.

  7. nothings says:

    Surely if you try to redo to the tape, you'll still just end up with around 3 files (different this time) corrupted, since it's the hard drive going south?

  8. yakko says:

    The sysadmin in me made me choose option #1, however, reading back, I'd now go with option #2, or just adding those 3 songs onto the last tape as another file.

    My mp3s are never backed up. Ever. If the disk tanks, I'll use that as incentive to properly rip my CDs this time (and -then- back them up!)

  9. guyver3 says:

    #1 because in those months down the line, or even possibly years, you will hit up the dat tape, and be all WTF!?!??! and perhaps not have those cds on hand anymore. of course, if it diffs after the second time, then uhh....

    Bacardi 151 time

  10. Obviously you should be taping the files FEC-encoded or something. Except the trouble might well be with *reading* them from the hard drive, so that when you perform a diff you don't even know which version is correct. Just get a different case and mobo and pile all your hard drives in there, or you will never be sure.