Choosing Which Media to Use

You typically back up Solaris 2.5 systems using:

• 1/2-inch reel tape

• 1/4-inch streaming cartridge tape

• 8-mm cartridge tape

• 4-mm cartridge tape (DAT)

You can perform backups using diskettes, but this is time-consuming and cumbersome.

The media you choose depends on the availability of the equipment that supports it and of the media (usually tape) that you use to store the files. Although you must do the backup from a local system, you can write the files to a remote device.

Table 38-1 shows typical media used for backing up file systems and shows the length (or storage capacity) for each.

Table 38-1 Media Storage Capacities

Media	Capacity	Tape Length
1/2-inch tape	40-45 Mbytes	2300 feet
60-Mbyte 1/4-inch cartridge	60 Mbytes	425 feet
150-Mbyte 1/4-inch cartridge	150 Mbytes	700 feet
2.3-Gbyte 8-mm	2.3 Gbytes	6000 feet
5.0-Gbyte 8-mm	5.0 Gbytes	13000 feet
3.5-inch diskette	1422 blocks (1.44 Mbytes)

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Note -

Capacity for 4-mm cartridge tapes depends on the type of drive and the data being written to the tape.

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