On Mon, 19 Feb 2001, Eric F Crist wrote:

> Ever hear of tar?  If you tar/gzip all those files, you're size of backup
> greatly decreses.  Other than that, you're either going to have to have a
> dedicated hard drive just for those tar files, or you're going to have to
> bite the bullet (sp?) and spend too much money on a backup source.

TANSTAAFL -- There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.  If you
zip/gzip/bzip2 your archive files, they are a lot more susceptible to
media corruption.

It's always a trade off -- safety of data is expensive *over time*.  The
longer you need to keep the data, the more it costs.  Do you spend it on
expensive high capacity media, or lots of cheap ones?  (IF you really
archive for a long time, you have to make copies on a regular basis --
ick!)

Entropy just ain't what it used to be.

-- 
"To misattribute a quote is unforgivable." --Anonymous