[ILUG] Autoloading DVD-R drives? Linux software for creating DVD sets?

[Justin Mason]

Proinnsias Breathnach writes:
> On Tue, Oct 24, 2006 at 03:00:59PM +0200, Ronan Cunniffe wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >    I am faced with occasionally needing to extract large (50-500GB) 
> > chunks of a data archive and ship them to random locations around the 
> > planet.  My current plan is Ye Olde Stack of DVDs, but I don't want to 
> > constantly create the sets by hand.
> > 
> >    The obvious (?) solution is some scripting, a DVD-R drive, a spindle 
> > of blanks, and a robotic arm that knows where they both are.
> 
> I sense, with volumes like that, and the prices as they are, that
> correctly padded / protected hard-drives will work out to be a more
> cost-efficient and speedy solution ?

True!  This article deals with multi-terabyte sneakernet:
http://www.acmqueue.org/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=43

  'I've been working with a bunch of astronomers lately and we need to
  send around huge databases. I started writing my databases to disk and
  mailing the disks. At first, I was extremely cautious because everybody
  said I couldn't do that¿that the disks are too fragile. I started out by
  putting the disks in foam. After mailing about 20 of them, I tried just
  putting them in bubble wrap in a FedEx envelope. Well, so far so good. I
  have not had any disk failures of mailed disks.'

also:

  'Another option is to send whole computers. I've been sending NTFS disks
  (the Windows file system format), and not every Linux system can read
  NTFS. So lately I'm sending complete computers. We're now into the
  2-terabyte realm, so we can't actually send a single disk; we need to
  send a bunch of disks. It's convenient to send them packaged inside a
  metal box that just happens to have a processor in it. I know this
  sounds crazy¿but you get an NFS or CIFS server and most people can just
  plug the thing into the wall and into the network and then copy the
  data.'

--j.