[CLUE-Tech] Tape Drives - why?

[Gary Threlkeld]

I for one have had terrible experiences with tape backups.  I once acquired
a brand-new tape backup system and using a brand-new tape, I completely
backed up a system AND successfully verified the tape backup.  When I went
to do a complete restore the same day, the tape reported read errors and
even with multiple attempts to do the restore, I ended up loosing the data
and having to rebuild the system as best I could from other backup media
(CD's, floppies, etc).  Needless to say, after that experience, I haven't
trusted tape backups.

Another example of tape backups that didn't work as planned was a major
corporation that backed up all its mainframe master files to tape.  They
had for several years used XYZ tape drives with no major reported problems.
Then some manager, seizing the opportunity to save a buck, decided his
corporation could save significant $$$'s by substituting tape drives from
company ABC (also a major tape drive manufacturer) for the one's currently
being leased from XYZ.  Within one week of making the swap, 10 master file
tapes had been destroyed and the project was abandoned at a substantial
cost to the corporation.  Guess this shows that hardware consistancy should
also be taken into consideration when performing backups.

As to the discussion of tapes being easier to take offsite - what about
taking backups or mirroring data on spare hard drives - then transmitting
them to another site -perhaps even an independent vendor that offers disk
space to house files and are themselves responsible for taking backups of
their systems with your data?  Wouldn't this negate the issues of transport
and storage?

Gary

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Match Grun" <match at dimensional.com>
To: <clue-tech at clue.denver.co.us>
Sent: Friday, July 30, 2004 12:41 AM
Subject: Re: [CLUE-Tech] Tape Drives - why?


> With all this talk of backups... So you all take backups to your chosen
> media. How many of you have done a restore from backups? I guess that
> very few have. How reliable have you restores from backups been?
>
> Match
>
> On Thu, 29 Jul 2004 17:17:53 -0600
> David Anselmi <anselmi at anselmi.us> wrote:
>
> > David L. Willson wrote:
> >
> > > OK, I'm no newbie, and I find myself asking the same damn question
> > > every time I get into the Backup & Disaster Recovery design process.
> > >  Why does any
> > > business with less than a TB of data to backup use tapes?  Why, why,
> > > why, when almost any fixed disk media is much cheaper and almost as
> > > easy to take offsite?
> >
> > In one office, I was using CDs.  When I outgrew that, I switched to
> > external USB drives.  This is nightly full backups taken off site
> > every day.  It happens to work in this case.
> >
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