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Tape Backup has
been the predominant backup media for almost 50 YEARS! And
it's really starting to show its age. Today, we wouldn't
even consider purchasing or storing our music on tape, so
why do we trust it with our mission critical business data?
Here's a list of common complaints about tape backup
solutions we hear from our clients all the time:
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Tapes Fail – fragile media
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Tape
Drives Fail
-
Outgrow the Tape (very hard to consistently
get a good backup once they are spanning
tapes)
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Hard
and time consuming to recover the entire
system
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Hard
to backup remote users
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The primary issue
is this: tape technology can't keep up with the capacity
increases of hard drive technologies. There's only 3
things you can do to increase the storage capacity of a
tape:
- New tape
format that's more efficient. We've had many
formats over the years, from QIC to 8mm to DAT to DLT.
But this is pretty much played out.
- Pack the
magnetic particles storing the data closer and closer.
- Make the
tape itself thinner and thinner so you can put more tape
(i.e., longer tape) in the cartridge.
These last 2
items result in increasing failures.
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