On 5/6/2016 7:39 AM, Mike Duffy wrote:
On Thu, 05 May 2016 23:02:38 -0700, Don Y wrote:

using some bizarro piece of software that [...] came with the device.

My favourite was some sort of 'backpack' - type tape drive that used the
parallel or SCSI port and could hold a couple of Gb.

I can recall using VHS video recorders (with a proprietary "black box"
that went to/from digital/analog format) as backup media. And,
HOPING that the tape was "portable" to another VCR if yours died!

At that time, CD-ROM was becoming popular for distribution. Everyone had
CD-ROM readers, but not everyone had CD-ROM writers.

My boss asked if I could make him a copy of the files on a CD which he
needed to return to whoever lended it out. I said yeas, and backed-up his
CD to a tape, and of course ran a verify afterwards to be adamantly certain
that the tape had an exact representation of every byte on the CD.

During the next few weeks, I ordered a CD writer, and eventually he asks
for a re-creation of the CD. I load up the tape, select all the files, and
press 'restore'.

Up pops a box: The files you selected are read-only. Please select files to
which you have proper access and try again.

And, you can't use ANY OTHER TOOL (software) to access the files.
Someone has invented their own special way of storing the data on
their own special device (tape).

The same is true, today, of COTS NAS devices. It *probably* runs some FOSS
OS. But, there's no guarantee that you can pull the disk out of the
NAS (when it dies) and try to recover the contents using a desktop
machine (e.g., with the drive installed in a USB carrier).

Or, if the "boot" drive in that NAS fails, you might discover that
you can't simply replace it -- even if you have the files safely
stored elsewhere -- as the software/firmware that makes the NAS
operational resides in a "hidden" place on that FAILED drive.
And, you don't have a way of copying it onto your new drive cuz
the old drive is kaput! (ditto if you are trying to upgrade
the disk before it fails)

Hence the reliance on having a backup of the *hardware* as well!

(some NAS's will complain if they encounter a "foreign" drive and
promptly offer to reformat it for you -- wiping all that precious
data in the process! : )

[I had this in mind when I concocted my archive scheme; I can simply
move a drive to another machine and access it as a "regular" drive
(if the "appliance" that normally supports it dies). The NAS
and redundancy functions are not tied to the drive or its actual
location!]