Month: September 2013

Long-term Backup Solutions 2013

I just realized how much disk space my videos eat up. PhRUG videos have now reached > 100GB, and with the new HD camera I’m expecting to use more space soon – Startup Weekend Manila 5 videos alone ate up 20+ GB and that’s just a 3.5 hour playlist.

So let’s take a look at the current long term backup solutions:

AWS

Cloud based
cheapest is Glacier at ~₱0.40 per GB / month, typical is S3’s ~₱3.20 per GB / month

pros

  • convenient, can be automated, takes no physical space

cons

  • costs pile up as time goes by e.g. ~₱4,800 per TB/yr for glacier, 8x that in S3
  • backup and restore speed limited by bandwidth

Hard Disk Drive

Hard Disk Drive
~₱2.00 per GB, not cheap initially, but cheaper on the long run

pros

  • backup and restore is fast and easy esp if you have an external docking station

cons

  • if not filled, it’s not “around the cost of 5 months of Glacier”
  • not sure how many years a rarely used HDD will last

DVD

recordable DVD
similar cost to HDD ~₱2.00 per GB

pros

  • somewhat convenient, combines the “spend only as you need” of cloud and possible long term storage of HDDs

cons

  • backup process is slow (writing is faster than cloud-based, but switching disks take time)
  • finding quality media that would last years requires trial and error
  • takes up more physical space than HDD when you reach terabyte levels

Tape Drive

Tape Drive
browsing around Newegg tells me they hover around ₱4.00 per GB

pros

  • small, built for long storage life

cons

  • have to find a tape drive to borrow (business opportunity!)
  • backup is slow, though still faster than cloud-based on crappy broadband

Any other thoughts on long-term backup?

Additional Steps for RailsInstaller in Windows 8

[UPDATE: You no longer need to do most of the steps below in recent versions of NodeJS. RailsInstaller/RubyInstaller should work just by installing NodeJS.]

If you’ve tried using RailsInstaller or RailsFTW in Windows 8, you might think it works out of the box — that is, until you open a page that uses the asset pipeline and get a cryptic message related to your CSS/JS.

The reason for this is that the built-in JScript runtime is incompatible with Rails. You need to install Node.js and make it the primary runtime for Rails to work.

The easiest way to do this is:

  1. Install Node.js
  2. Run Node.js » “Node.js command prompt”
  3. Get the path of node.exe via “path” command. You’ll get something like: 
    C:\Users\bry>path
PATH=C:\Users\bry\AppData\Roaming\npm;C:\Program Files\nodejs\;C:\Program Files...

    Get the “C:\Users\bry\AppData\Roaming\npm;C:\Program Files\nodejs\;” part.

    Tip: right click command prompt window » Poperties » tick QuickEdit Mode so you can select and right click to copy to clipboard.

  4. Edit the setup_environment.bat for RailsInstaller (e.g. C:\RailsInstaller\Ruby2.0.0\setup_environment.bat, Notepad will do), find the following line 
    SET PATH=%RUBY_DIR%\bin;%RUBY_DIR%\lib\ruby\gems\1.9.1\bin;%ROOT_DIR%\DevKit\bin;%PATH%

    for RailsFTW this will be setrbvars.bat (e.g. C:\RailsFTW200402\bin\setrbvars.bat) and the line will be:

    SET PATH=%RUBY_BIN%;%PATH%

    and add the Node.js path after the SET PATH= e.g for RailsInstaller:

    SET PATH=C:\Users\bry\AppData\Roaming\npm;C:\Program Files\nodejs\;%RUBY_DIR%\bin;%RUBY_DIR%\lib\ruby\gems\1.9.1\bin;%ROOT_DIR%\DevKit\bin;%PATH%

    for RailsFTW:

    SET PATH=C:\Users\bry\AppData\Roaming\npm;C:\Program Files\nodejs\;%RUBY_BIN%;%PATH%
  5. At this point, RailsInstaller » “Command Prompt with Ruby and Rails” and RailsFTW » “Start Command Prompt with Ruby” will now have Node.js as the runtime.