Enormous amounts of data in the hard disk can be duplicated into the tape such that in the event of an unfortunate hard disk crash, the data can be restored.
Although end users already prefer disk or online backup storage, tape backup continues to exist in large enterprises because of its archival stability. Tape backup started in the s but was largely abandoned in favor of disk backup by the late s because disks are faster and can store a lot more data. A tape drive uses a sequential access kind of storage. This means that groups of stored data are accessed in a prearranged and methodical sequence, making it hard to selectively find data that may be in the middle of the tape spool.
Because it is only capable of this kind of storage access, tape drives lose in terms of searching time when compared to disk drives, which use random access storage methods.
Random access storage accesses data at a random position in a sequence regardless of the sequence size. This makes it faster than sequential access. For consumers and small business end users, tape backup is a very impractical solution, yet it continues to serve as an ideal storage solution for archiving and disaster recovery purposes for large organizations, or enterprise as part of a storage area network SAN solution. This is why storage device manufacturers continue to develop and enhance tape storage technology by increasing its storage performance and capacity.
By: Justin Stoltzfus Contributor, Reviewer. Despite the age of this technology, these benefits lead many companies to back up their important information using magnetic storage tapes. Companies that are required to backup large amounts of data: hospitals, universities, the government, IT companies, non-profit organizations etc. Magnetic tapes are convenient, secure, and affordable, and companies across the world still rely on this technology to keep their records safe.
They can also be hacked remotely, where a thief would need to break in and physically steal a magnetic tape from a secure offsite storage vault to compromise your magnetic data. To protect personal and private information, organizations and individuals alike are encouraged to routinely backup their data. Magnetic tapes have withstood the test of time and remain one of the best ways to safely backup large volumes of information. Tape may seem like an outdated media of data storage at this day and age, but for many reasons, it is an excellent means of backing up your workloads.
This is an affordable and high-capacity device that is perfect for storing large amounts of data. Our blog post attempts to explain how tape backup software works and what benefits tape backup can provide to your company. The newly-added feature allows you to send backup copies to tape, greatly simplifying process management as well as saving storage space resources.
When comparing magnetic tape to other backup storage options, including disk drives, file servers, and cloud platforms, this is the best media for archiving your data. As long as magnetic tape is an offline means of data storage, it is highly secure. Unlike most other backup storage media, tape is not vulnerable to hacking and cyberattacks. Another important factor is the attractive cost. A 1TB portable hard drive is almost 10 times more expensive than a tape cartridge with the same capacity.
It is true that the price of hard drives and solid-state storage media continues to decrease, while the capacity of a disk may reach as much as 16TB. Magnetic tape storage, however, has no capacity limits, provided that you are running a reliable system for managing and storing the tape cartridges.
Another strong side of tape backups are the low storage requirements. Unlike disk and flash-based systems, tape cartridges do not require power, cooling, etc. Ideally, cartridges should be stored in an environment where you can control temperature and humidity, but you can also keep them in a regular office.
The above-mentioned characteristics turn tape into a perfect option for data storage and archiving, even when considering some of the challenges this media is associated with. Having a full and up-to-date backup allows you to quickly restore your workloads with essentially no data loss, but it is not the best option if you want to save time and resources during regular backup sessions. To do this, you can perform incremental backups, aka backups of only the files that have changed since the latest backup cycle.
Although resource-efficient, this method is also slower, particularly when it comes to the system restore. The process of file restoration can become rather time-consuming if you have numerous incremental backups on separate tapes for example, one for each day of the week. Additionally, it can take some time to look through several incremental backups if you need to find and restore one particular file. Typically, incremental backups are small in size and only require a small section of tape.
To further save costs, you can set up your tape drive backup software in a way so as to start writing the following backup where the previous session finished. This allows you to make full use of a single tape, though be sure not to lose it.
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