Retro storage formats have it taped
Old technology still on-top
ACCORDING TO RECENT research by IDC, the LTO tape is still the most popular practice process in data storage and business continuity strategies – despite technological advancement.
Even though this technology is stuck in the 90s, studies have shown a 15 per cent increase in sales in 2007 over 2006 – which is surprising considering the LTO tape has proved to be next to impossible to recover when re-writes or failures occur.
Kroll Ontrack is one company which has seen a huge increase in the amount of requests for LTO tape recovery, as they now have the capability to recover previously lost information.
This capability is especially critical as more and more companies have to comply with rules and regulations regarding data retention or produce backup data during litigations and investigations. µ
Comments
Think outside the PC box
Right on!The usual PC hype does not count when reliability and performance are of paramount importance. Take a look at alternatives, for example optical disks. The capacity of Blu-Ray is laughable. If the durability of writable Blu-Ray disks is as good as CD-R(W) or DVD+/-R(W), then it is worthless as alternative to tapes. And who wants to deal with garbage like the MAFIAA's DRM?
Makes total sense that tape is still popular
I have a friend who kept his stuff backed up in RAID, I forget which type. It was the one where two drives could fail and your data would still be recoverable. Foolproof, right?Wrong. Since all the drives were in the same piece of furniture, all that was really needed to make the data unrecoverable was for the furniture(it may have been a shelf, I forget) to fall over, which it did. He lost TERABYTES of data because of that. Now he backs up to tape at least once a week.
How is this "stuck in the 90s"?
How is this "stuck in the 90s" when the first commercially available LTO was released in 2000, and even then in capacities of up to 100GB? Modern LTO systems have tape capacities comparable to upper-mid-range hard drives, with speeds to match. Furthermore, such tape systems have many mechanisms in place to ensure that information is written reliably and recoverably should an error introduce itself after the data is written. I'd like to know what "modern" technologies should replace such "archaic" data storage systems.Still using them a lot
Working in a major data server, I can guarantee there is still great use of tapes for backup purposes;The next two weeks will be pure hell for colleagues in the server proximity area, where more than 60000 tapes will be moved...
So, yes, backup tapes are still more alive than ever, and refusing to die (if not of old age).
Aussies do it better
Apparently, a crowd in OZ have a neat Network attached solution that is multi teired and fully managed. No more forgetting to do the backups and handing over a damaged or dud tape.They call it the bizebox and it handles onsite and offsite data protection.