Tape Drive Backup
Tape drives are expensive,
time-consuming and unreliable.
1. Affordability: Endless Harware
& Media Expenses
- Tape drives cost $350 to literally thousands;
- Most tapes cost at least $25-50 each. You need
a minimum of 5 tapes for a Monday through Friday rotation
plus an additional 4 tapes for weekly offsite rotations...
totaling at least $225 in replaceable media alone!
- Tapes and drives can quickly become outdated
and obsolete (connection, capacity, durability and updated
technologies), especially if you don't clean them regularly.
Experts recommend replacing tapes every year.
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2.
Reliability: Failure-Prone Media and Drives
- Tapes are notoriously failure-prone,
vulnerable to degradation by the environment (heat,
sunlight, humidity, liquids, dust) and human mishandling
(dropped, misplaced, etc.).
- Like other magnetic backup media, tapes are
frequently damaged by electromagnetic fields emitted by TVs,
monitors, speakers, etc.
- Tapes and drives often get stuck, worn out and
broken. If they fail (they do frequently), you face
extensive repair or replacement costs, and either prolonged
downtime or a more costly emergency service.
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3. Data
Protection: Not Offsite is Not Alright
- Unless they're taken offsite every night
(which rarely happens regularly), tape drives fail to
protect data offsite against natural disasters (fire, flood,
hurricane, tornado, lightning, solar flares and
earthquakes), not to mention theft, disgruntled employees
and sabotage.
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4. Data
Security: Portable Media = Inherent Risks
- Where do you store your backup tapes -- a
safety deposit box, a glove compartment, a purse, a night
stand, or you don't know?
- Is your data encrypted or even password
protected?
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5.
Convenience: Install, Admin & Storage Demands
- Tape drive installation is expensive, and
needs to be performed properly by qualified technicians who
typically earn $50 - 200 per hour.
- Daily tape backup administration is
time-consuming and cumbersome manual process requiring
constant human interaction (loading, rotating tapes,
monitoring, etc.) and requires a highly qualified and
focused professional, unless you have an auto-loader tape
library ($40K?).
- Since tapes are extremely vulnerable to
environmental hazards, they should be stored in expensive
climate-controlled locations.
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6. Tape
Capacity: A Deceptive Figure
- Tape manufacturers typically advertise
capacities between 4 and 20 GB, but that figure is based on
maximum compression and considerably exaggerated. Many of
your large files are already compressed as much as possible
(zip files, video and graphics).
- Most tapes are built for specific drives, so
if you run out of space in your tape rotation, you may need
to upgrade to a new drive and tapes.
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7. Remote File
Access: Network-Only
- Unless you have a dedicated file server with
an attached tape library, you can't readily access data
stored on your tape drives. Even then, you can't access it
through the Web, only through your local network.
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8. File
Versioning: Complicated and Unreliable
- Retrieving versions across multiple tapes can
be complicated, time consuming and unreliable.
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9. Full System Backup: Cumbersome,
Failure Prone
- You can back up your entire system using a
tape drive, but recovery typically is an extremely
cumbersome, time intensive and failure-prone process
involving a matrix of tapes, files and versions.
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10. Support:
Hiring High-Paid Professionals
- Do you have a tape drive recovery service to
call if your in-house backup solution fails? How much do
they charge?
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