Hi everyone,

A friend of mine has is own law firm and I've set him up with a network file server running OpenBSD. He is moving to a "paperless office", with everything scanned into searchable PDF, with hardcopies stored offsite as legally required but not in the office. He has been making backups to DVD-ROM, but expects to have significantly more data as a result of this big scanning process.

I have recommended tape as a good long-term backup solution, with 2 weeks of daily tapes in rotation and semi-monthly or monthly archive tape for offsite vault storage.

The last time I bought a tape drive for an office, DAT was still the answer. I'm not familiar with the current hardware/tape combinations and am hoping some of you can offer your opinions of the current tape solutions.

I'm expecting he will have more than 100GB but less than 300GB of data, and (as law firms generate a ridiculous amount of documents) that he will need some room to expand over the next 2-3 years.

The friend is a technophile, and understands that any computer infrastructure is a temporary solution. He would be fine with 2-3 years of use out of the system.

I'd prefer to have UNIX dump the whole filesystem to a single tape unattended overnight. Then all his paralegal (who is not tech savvy) will need to do is change the tapes in an orderly manner.

Thanks in advance for your guidance!

Jim