Backup Strategies with Large volumes of data

Hi there
Just wondering how people handle backing up large volumes of DATA and performing recoveries if required from this data. Now as cheap 3TB disks are readily available and by using Spanning or Storage pools you can get very large data spaces of say 12 TB for example.

Now things like acronis can actually handle large volumes of data - backup will just request another volume when the first one is full so you might for example have 7 external USB disks being used for a backup.

With this huge volumeof data you can't just keep one or two disks around and then look for something with Windows explorer if you need to recover some data. So are there any decent Cataloguing systems out there yet suitable for HOME users. I don't need something like a Bank would use to recover data (and judging by recent performances it can take them a WEEK !!).

Anybody got any ideas - this sort of question I'm sure will become more important soon = I'd hate to lose say 2 TB's worth of Music for example.

Years ago tape systems were common -- they though were EXPENSIVE, SLOW and unreliable but they used to have decent cataloguing systems.

I'd like to have some sort of program that says xxxxxxx backed up on ddmmyy on volumes xxxx,yyyy.

If you need to recover some data :

The current backups usually insist you put the LAST volume of the backup in (assuming you know which disk it is) and then after a load of reads finally ask you to mount volume YYYY in the backup set -- also if you know what it is.

Restoring 12 TB of data isn't a practical option.

Any ideas anyone. (Home type solutions here please -- I'm not running a Billion Dollar data centre).

(If people think 12 TB is excessive -- just think these days it's quite common for people to have 4 or 5 disks of at least 1 TB on their machines now).

Cheers
jimbo