I read a lot of posts where people are comparing the differences both positive and negative with using disk or tapes as backup media. Here are the ones I see the most.
- Disk Advantages: Cheaper, More Storage for Cost, Faster
- Disk disadvantages: Not as reliable, Easier to Damage, Removal / Storage of Media
- Tape Advantages: Reliability, Easier swap out of media
- Tape Disadvantages: Cost, Speed
Here is what I feel in a nutshell. I prefer tape I know a lot of you are thinking right now that I am old fashioned you might be right. But I will take the reliability of a product over speed or cost any day. All you have to do is not be able to get some data back once and you will feel as I do. A lot of people will question the reliability of tape stating that the hardware breaks, you are right it does, but it will tell you when it is broken disks do not always do this. The issue with disk is that when you go to restore and you have an issue with the disk you are done. I have had instances with tape when this has happened also but only when using cheap tape drives if you are using LTO or SDLT or even DLT this does not happen. Though if you are using 8mm or Travan then it would be better for you to use disk these I do not feel are very reliable.
Here is my solution use both do daily backups to disk then write the weeklies to tape for offsite storage. This way you get the speed of disk and the reliability of tape. This option costs more but if you have a business that you want to keep running it should be worth it.
Powered by FireStats
June 1st, 2007 at 9:21 pm
Anyone who just uses disk for backups is just crazy. Unless that data just does not mean anything to you and then you have to ask yourself why am I backing it up? Here is a scenario that just happened to a person I know. About 3 month ago this person came to me and asked what I would suggest he do for backing up his QuickBooks data. I told him that what I would do is back up the data to two separate locations one to a USB drive that stays permanently attached to the server and the other to some type of removable media tape, REV Drive or some other media that can be put into a fire safe or taken off site. I told them the total cost including backup software tape drive and USB disk would be about two thousand dollars. His response was that he was thinking of spending no more that five hundred dollars so I told him to buy a tape drive but instead he bought 2 USB hard drives for a total cost of about three hundred dollars. He also decided not to buy a full blown backup package like Backup Exec by Veritas but use the one step backup that came with the drives. Well to make a long story short three months goes by and his computer crashes he takes it to the local computer place and they determine hard drive failure. He thinks thank goodness I have a backup. Only to find that his inexpensive backup software does not do bit by bit comparisons of the files and only checks file size. OOPS not only that but since he has been switching the disks out he did not verify that each time he plugged them back in that they were in fact really working, he did not testing his backups. With permanently connected media sources like tape you do not have this issue. USB drives tend to drop off line when switched and they seem to do this when you least expect them to. Also if you are transporting the disks drives they are a lot more vulnerable then tape or other type of removable media. Well the end result was that they lost all of there Quick Books data and it cost them a lot more than two thousand dollars to get it all put back in. Do your self a favor use a disk/removable media backup. Unless the data is not that important and if it is not then why are you wasting your time backing it up in the first place?