My webserver died the other day. Fortunately, it was the motherboard. The disk was fine, and I didn't lose any data. I've moved the functionality to my other Linux box, and it all seems to be working fine, so far.

It did bring home the painful fact that I'm extremely slack when it comes to backup. The last time, for example, when I decided to back up my MP3 collection to DVD, I gave up after the first 3 hours of swapping disks.

So, I'm looking at proper backup solutions. Here's my thinking:

1. Tape drives are expensive. For example, VXA2 drives start at £600. DLT drives are over a grand.
2. Hard disks are about the same price as equivalently-sized tapes.
3. However, removable disks require a caddy for each disk. I'm not looking at single-shot backup -- I'm looking at a complete backup every couple of months followed by weekly incremental or differential backups.
4. External hard disks require USB or Firewire connectivity. My Linux box doesn't have working Firewire, and USB1 is dog slow.
5. Hard disks take up quite a lot of space -- they'd be hard to drop into a Jiffy bag and post to my Mum (for offsite storage), for example.

Currently, I'm leaning towards dropping the money on an Exabyte VXA2 drive and a stack of tapes.

Any suggestions?