Mengjuei - Blog

技術 :: Backing up with DVD Sucks

Last weekend I was doing the whole-users-backup to DVDs, at the beginning I wanted to do it on my mac because I didn't want to do this kind of thing in the lab, especially during the weekend. Then I found out that doing it this way could cost me a lot of time on file transferring from the lab to my home.

The way I burned the backup DVD was very straight-forward. I just need to rsync the files to my powerbook, and I burned the contents to the DVD discs using Toast Titanium. And of course, I did content verification for every disc I burned. Normally Toast can do the verification, but it seems to be easier to access that function right after the recording process finished. If I skipped the verification, I would just do diff -r /Volumes/backup backup (for example). Anyway, this kind of tedious process takes about an hour. Sucks, doesn't it?

Despite the problem of slow bandwidth, I managed backing up 6 DVD discs on Saturday. I went back to the lab on Sunday, mainly because I only brought 6 discs home. Then I started to do this on the linux file server in the lab. I found our NeroLinux was extremely slow on updating the total size and even the gtk+ menu! Everytime I added a directory to the project, it took about 5 minute to be responsive to my command again. I spent 4 hours waiting to adjust the recording project to fit into a size of a DVD+R.

Later I found out NeroLinux lied about the total size! I switched to nautilus-cd-burner, and it lied, too! I was like stupid nerd using du -sh (which is also slow) to manage the project in blind.

Okay, I am not a geek. Geeks find ways to figure out where the problem is. I finally switched back to my powerbook. It's faster. Wait a minute! My internet connection thru the graduate housing started to black out several minutes ago. DVD sucks, and the network sucks. Screw you guys, I am going home. 凸