[alcimedes]

I'm looking for software that will span DVD's, and work with a DVD burner other than the default DVD drive in my tower.

I've got a few hundred gigs of data I need to back up to DVD, so an 8x burner vs. a 2x burner makes a big difference to me.

I tried the Backup software that came with .Mac, and I wasn't able to select the device i wanted to burn the files to.

Toast (6) would let me select the drive I wanted to burn to, but wasn't able to span multiple DVDs from what I could tell. Anyone out there have a good solution?

[709]

Does it have to go to DVD? I mean, will the data be passed around a lot instead of going into storage?

I ask because I run into the same thing, but my project backups are stored and then pulled maybe twice a year or so for updates. I was backing up to DVD, but it took too damn long and wasn't very cost effective.

So I took to just scanning dealmac.com every so often and picking up 200GB+ Seagate drives whenever they went on sale. I pop one in to my external FW800 case, transfer all the data, pull it and store it. Makes life a hell of a lot easier when I have to go back into the project. Loading 25 or more DVDs back onto your machine gets old. Fast.

[thuh Freak]

one of the features of the program 'tar' is that tar files can be split. idk if u cool with the CLI, but it looks like it can do waht u want. infact, backing up to tape was the original intent (Tape ARchive), and therefore it has functionality to split a tar file when a disk runs out of space. I looked into the tar manual, and it seems u need to use the --multi-volume and --tape-length options. I didn't see if the --tape-length arg can take huge sizes, so u may have to figure out what that gigage is in bytes or something. and a cool thing is the tars it creates can be used individually, with the exception of a single file per tar which will more than likely span two tars (or if u have a really huge file, that went across several dvds, well it'd go across many tars).

i don't think tar has good compression (infact, i dont think it compresses at all). but gziping those files will give u a little more space.

[curiousuburb]

Looks like Retrospect is now Panther savvy... used it successfully back in the 90's.

...claims the widest variety of backup devices, including spanning across multiple drives.

Not sure if that satisfies your needs, but it might be another candidate (does have a trial version)

[alcimedes]

Actually, that's the problem.

I'm using Retrospect to back up my coworker's machines. So it has to stay running pretty much 24/7. I don't have a chance to shut it down so it can back files up to DVD's, at least not safely.

I'm wondering now if Backup will work. I thought it had in the past, and just found out that the Pioneer 109 drives I bought aren't recognized by 10.3.8 for burning. I'm guessing that might be the biggest problem.

[ezkcdude]

I do not consider hundreds of GB's LARGE. Just get some external hard drives. In my lab, we have several TB of data, and use an Apple XServ RAID. Now, that's LARGE .

[alcimedes]

Well, I'm using an XRAID now to store the data on the day to day updates. I want some kind of static, non moving, non magnetic storage for the final offsite storage option. That pretty much rules out drives and tapes. Hopefully Apple will patch up their OS soon so that I can use these drives.

[alcimedes]

Ok, found a solution.

There's a program called PatchBurn3 that you can install on your Mac that allows the varius iApps to see and use 3rd party burners. Installed it and it's working like a charm. Backup now offers a variety of drives to use to back the data up onto, and it's working like a charm.