[Thinkpad] Flash (SD) as backup? (Alex Austin)

[bruce edwards]

For what it's worth I was a long time Zip100 user (starting in '95 and by 
and large phased out in '05).  IDE, SCSI, parallel, & usb.  I think last 
time I used it as solution for a client was roughly 4 years ago.  during the 
past five or so the Zip drive function has been replaced by SD flash.  It 
was a scaled roll out but the original 100+ meg 'key chain' flash drive is 
still in use (it serves as the daily dump for my fathers machine, he had 
been using floppies)

For live remote recording (audio) in addition to the multitrack sessions I 
also have always dumped a stereo feed straight out of the board, first via 
cassette, followed for almost as long as cassette a standalone SCSI recorder 
(looked at marantz direct to CD, but feature set cost/benefit ratio was 
never right), in the last year that has switched to SD flash recording as 
well. That stereo reference gets a lot more use then any data b/u (not to 
say it's more important, but the data b/u gets used when something goes 
wrong . . . stereo dump gets used then, but also as a reference to speed 
processing of the entire project . . . in some ways using SD as a media for 
that was a tougher sell then as data b/u)

Interestingly enough the personal household financial dynamic (3 discs in 
incremental rotation) b/u still uses zip (as far as I know the only zip dics 
I still have in play).

No media is perfect but after 5 years I have no more issues with using SD 
flash as part of the back up strategy then I had for Boroughs Drives, 
cassette B/U, exabyte, floppies, zip, CD-R, DVD-R, stand alone HD's, LAN 
NAS, etc.

Everything has issues

That said I doubt I would be willing to depend on any flash as my sole back 
up media.  As it is I use combination of flash, CD/DVD, Network attached 
dedicated HD's

In many ways the most convenient (and until very recently, for a very (in 
computer years) long time the best $/meg) and reliable remains CD-R  (I back 
up a lot of media files to DVD, but a lot of text & spread sheet material 
still goes to CD)  Starting in 94 I dropped some early test discs in the 
truck of the car.  After a couple of years I more or less forgot about them, 
pulled them out in mid '02  and had no problem with any of the discs.  But 
backing up to CD has never, for me, been an unattended one step process.  
Just recently sent, via FTP, a client a 500 meg back up and found out that 
there are still some people around who are not familiar with the 'ISO' image 
file concept . . . in retrospect I suppose I could have just sent a 'zip' 
archive but at the time the 'iso' seemed simpler

Anyway 5+ yr. with flash as daily walk around b/u (with fewer problems then 
floppies or tape), CD/DVD archival, HD as offsite dynamic & I still get bit 
on the ass occasionally!

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