In comp.unix.admin Bit Twister <BitTwister@localhost.localdomain> wrote:

> Our lawyer calls me up and asks for project plans, requirement/design
> docs, memos, source. Glad my operations group have yearly backups
> going way back.
> What is even better, when the media changed from round reel to
> cartridge, they copied all the data onto the new media.

Similar situation: I used to work for $VERY_BIG_COMPANY who was being
sued for a (bogus) patent infringement claim. By going back to backup
tapes, again, 2 generations older than current technology, I was able to
retrieve the weekly "report to my boss what I was working on this week"
file from the key developer who had been on the project. Using these files,
we were able to show what, when, and by whom, the work had been done.

If we had reused those tapes, it would have been a finger-pointing contest,
at which point a jury could have very well decided to give the advantage
to the "little guy" fighting the very very big company. We kept all of our
full backups (done weekly) offsite, and pay an obscene amount of money to
store them (and for the tapes that are effectively "lost"), but that one
lawsuit could have more than wiped out any savings that we would have seen
by reusing those tapes.

If nothing else, decide on a policy...full backups have *x* months of
retention ('forever' might be the right answer), but incrementals have
just a few months before they're reused. Maybe you only want to keep one
set of full backups per month, but keep those forever; it depends on
how much risk you're willing to take, compared to the cost of tapes.

One other thing - if your software can be configured so that full and
incrementals get written to different tapes, do it. That way, only full
backups will be on the tapes you need to keep around.

> Penny wise can be pound foolish.

Absolutely correct. Tape is cheaper than the work needed to generate the
data on it, almost always.

Dave Hinz