Updated 4/18/00 to include 8X FireWire CDR; First Posted 12/6/99
© 1999 Rob Art Morgan, editor of BARE FEATS
Lotza ways to back up files. Some more reliable than others. But if you had to back up something in a hurry, what would be the fastest (other than another hard drive)? The graph below shows the speed in megabytes per second using various external removable drives or network connection.
Conclusion: The Castlewood Orb drive is the fastest way to back up documents. Personally, I prefer using the 8X FireWire CDR for the most reliable multiple archival backup. (I hope to test a DVD-RAM in the near future.)Other Thots: Notice using 100BaseT to back up to another Mac is a faster than anything but the Orb. If you have two or more newer Macs with 100BaseT, it's a viable way to back up. I was backing up from a G4/400 Sawtooth to a G4/400 Yikes. I tried both normal Appletalk and TCP/IP. For this application, Appletalk was fastest.
The fastest kind of backup you can achieve is to have a mirrored sealed hard drive so you always have two instant copies of all documents. Another fast method is to just copy things to a second sealed hard drive (up to 30 MB/sec+) or one of the sealed FireWire drives from VST (up to 15 MB/second).
Note how S-L-O-W Airport was. I've been given some advice on how to speed it up. If I get it to go faster, I'll report back to you.
All back ups were done from a G4/400 Graphite "Sawtooth" internal Seagate Barracuda 7200 rpm hard drive to these devices:
BACK UP TARGET
INTERFACE
Castlewood Orb 2 Gig SCSI removable
Fast SCSI (Initio Bluenote)
Iomega Jaz 2 Gig SCSI removable
Fast SCSI (Initio Bluenote)
G4/400 Yikes internal WDC 10 Gig
100BaseT (DaynaSTAR FastHub-8)
VST FireWire 250MB Zip
FireWire
Que 8X CD-R FireWire
FireWire
G4/400 Yikes internal WDC 10 Gig
10BaseT (Farallon Ether10-T Starlet-8)
Iomega 100MB USB Zip drive
USB
Castlewood Orb 2 Gig SCSI removable
Entrega USB to SCSI interface
Yamaha 4X CD-R SCSI
Fast SCSI (Initio Bluenote)
Imation 2X SuperDrive USB
USB
G3/300 iBook with Internal 3 Gig
Airport
Many thanks to...
Iomega for the use of the 100MB Zip drive (I would be even more thankful if they would provide a Jaz 2 Gig for testing)
VST for the use of the FireWire 250MB Zip
Kent Keith for the use of the Imation 2X SuperDrive
and my daughter, Stephanie, for the use of her iMac 333.