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What’s wrong with Tape Backups?

For the past 50 years the principal method of backing up your data offsite has been to use magnetic tape which is then manually taken to a remote location and stored. We wouldn’t consider purchasing or storing music on tape anymore, yet we still seem happy to trust it with our mission critical business data?
There are a number of common complaints from those using tape to backup and store their data:

• Tapes Fail. They are a fragile media and are prone to degrading and breaking.
• Tape Drives Fail
• Backups will often outgrow the tape and need to spanned across many tapes.
• Restoring an entire system from tape can be difficult and time consuming
• There can sometimes be errors on restore. The consistency of the backup is not always tested.
• Open files sometimes not backed up
• Retrieving a single file from backup can often also be difficult and time consuming.
• Offsite Tape Rotation a pain – time consuming and unreliable

Most companies today understand the need to maintain an offsite backup of their data, allowing them to continue functioning in the event of a disaster. They may have set up a Technology Recovery Action Plan some time ago when tape was the only real solution to the need for offsite backup. Now that high-speed broadband is readily available to businesses across the country, the option to backup your data safely, securely and easily online has become the most practical and cost-effective option.
Businesses that haven’t seen an online backup system in action are often surprised at how easy, fast and manageable it is when compared to their existing method of backing up to tape.

Financial organisations that are required by the FSA to keep several years worth of data offsite have also used tape until quite recently. Now that the technology has moved on and become more reliable, these organisations, which are often slow to react to new movements in technology, are all moving away from tape to disk based backup storage.
There is good reason for companies like this to be making this move. In The Cost of Lost Data (2003), Dr. David Smith estimates the average cost of irrecoverably lost data at more than £5000 per megabyte. If the data is business transaction data and key to your company’s regulatory compliance, the costs involved can greatly increase. Just a small section of data become corrupted due degradation in tape, the costs involved to a company can be very significant, both financially and in terms of loss of reputation.

If you are currently using tape for offsite storage and would like to discuss how we can help implement a more secure and reliable offsite storage system, then call us on 0845 862 4410 or email info@eastquayit.com.