DVD-R/W In Unix?

Vilorman asks: "So has anyone been successful at writing DVD's in Unix? At work, we're primarily a Solaris shop and we just got an IDE CD-RW working but it's a little small. We need to archive a four gig filesystem and DVD sounds like the way to go. I do have a few concerns: how well does Solaris or Linux supoort the DVD media; and what type of drive works best under either OS (IDE, SCSI, Firewire, etc)? I've found IDE and FireWire drives but SCSI DVR-R/W still seems to be a little scarce. One would assume (from looking at the code) that Schilly's CD-Record and mkisofs would get the job done with a DVD, right?"

Why not tape?

[scheme]

A DLT or DDS tape drive will give you on the order of 2-40 GB per tape depending on the format you use, comes in scsi version, and is well supported under solaris and linux. You can get a decent 15/30GB DLT drive on ebay for about $100. With DLT drives, the media will cost about the same as a blank DVD, you'll get more storage capacity, better support and the option to upgrade to autoloading tape drives if your backup needs grow beyond the capacity of a single tape. Plus some of the newer tape drives will let you boot from tape and begin a restore automatically.

Throughput

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot to mention that the throughput to such a tape drive is going to be several orders of magnitude faster than any DVD solution.