From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Subject: Re: [9fans] WORM recomendations?
From: jmk@plan9.bell-labs.com
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
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Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2001 13:25:43 -0500
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On Tue Jan 16 12:54:23 EST 2001, boyd@planete.net wrote:
> i've just bought a cd rom burner and the thought ocurred
> to me to build a file-server that used it as the worm.
> at like, 50c for a blank disc is a cheap, reliable solution.
> 
> may need a bit of tweaking though.
> 

The problem with write-once media such as CD-R, DVD-whatever and MO is
the medium only comes in a relatively small chunk, e.g. 650MB, 4+GB
and 5.2GB for the above examples. Backing up even a single 82GB filesytem
without a jukebox becomes painful. If the hard drives are mirrored then
using a single write-once drive for disaster recovery might be an option;
there are cheap mirroring IDE RAID controllers available although I've
never tried them.

Instead of the single write-once drive with mirrored hard drives you might
think of using one of the tape jukeboxes for disaster recovery. Again, I've
never tried this, but they do offer the appearance of a random-access store
like the MO jukeboxes, only slower. I doubt if they're cheap, though.

We're currently in a very active state rewriting the fileserver code and
trying out some new ideas. We don't know yet quite what the result will be
but addressing some of these problems is part of the goal.

> 
> where are we on USB support?
> 
> 

I thought you were doing it.

--jim