what is a good way of backing up large files? i was thinking tape drive..

[dowxp]

is this viable? if so, what is a good brand. good\bad sides? thanks

i need to backup my friends episodes and lots of anime. burning is a waste, is a tape easier?

 

[VBboy]

LOL, consider backing that up to a VHS tape! What's the point of keeping rarely watched videos on your PC? Dump them on a regular video tape, it's almost free and saves gigs of space.

Also, convert your movies to Divx format - you will save a lot of space.

And finally, you can use either a CD-ROM drive or a tape drive.. Tape is not that slow nowadays.. However, it costs much more than a regular video tape (see suggestion #1). You can split large files into chunks - e.g. by using WinRar (select "no compression" to reduce the time it takes). Or use any shareware file splitter out there.

Consider deleting the "Friends" episodes - they are not that good

 

[Jerboy]

How about CD-RW? Its not the most convenient, but high capacity tape drives are VERY VERY expensive.

 

[ChrisIsBored]

Tapes are pretty expensive.. but if you're talking Gigs and Gigs of endless movies it might be a good way to go... get yourself a cheap used 20G Travan drive...

CD-R's would be more convenient if the movies fit... DVD-R's are too expensive comparing space/price with that of tape...

 

[CSS]

Why not use a hard disk as a backup medium ? They are cheap, fast and easy to backup to. Yes they are not easy to remove in general but that is in most installations not a problem if you just want to use it as a backup and not for transfering to another PC.

Restoring is also very easy. Just by the cheapest hard disk with what ever size you need. Does not matter if it is a 5400 RPM it is going to be faster then any other backup device. You can buy 80 GB for $200 or so.

 

[Wind]

W/ the ratio of price per MB. I think the CDRW serve well.

 

[Yoshi]

I agree with the guy above. If you have massive amounts of data to store buy more HDD's, they are cheap as hell per megabyte of storage. And yes, convert to MPEG4 first, you will save a ton of space with basically no quality loss!!

These days I only use my burner to copy disks and make my own mixed song CD's. I bought a large case with lots of space for drives to handle all the data.