There Are Six Critical Characteristics You Must Consider
Every Time You Backup Your Data To Ensure It Works Right Regardless Of Who Or When It’s Done Or You’ll Suffer...

Now You See It…Now You Don’t Disaster.

Tape has been the industry standard backup medium for the past four decades. As the technology was created, it had a lower cost per megabyte than hard disk, was readily available, and was relatively durable. Depending on the size of the database, tape could handle the job with little or no human interaction. The data could be verified as it was written out to the tape to guarantee that it was written. The amount of data that could be stored was infinite since infinite tapes could be bought and used. Storage of the tapes was easy because no special requirements were needed other than typical office temperatures. Finally, the cost versus time to backup speed ratio and ability to run without human intervention initially made the ROI high.

Since those early years, things have changed. The price of disk storage and the size of the hard disks involved has dramatically fallen. Part of that process has been that denser quantities of data can be stored on the same disk. Tape has also dropped in price and the density of data written to one tape has grown. However, databases have continued to expand at an incredible rate exceeding the rate of tape data density growth.

The process of storing data on tape involves writing data on the tape and quickly reading it to be sure that it is actually on that tape. Once a tape has been written, it is seldom examined until a request for the data is made…in other words, recovery. Storing data on hard disk is a multi-step process. The computer calculates a place on the disk and reserves that space. The data is written out and read multiple times to insure that it has been written correctly. If there is difficulty, the software marks that space as unusable. This process is a much more thorough process due to the faster nature of the hard drive. While tape drives can mark a bad spot on the tape and skip that section, the overall functionality of a tape is not continually checked like a hard disk.