subject: Words Of Advice From An It Service Professional: Small Businesses Shouldnt Use Tape Back Up Syste [print this page] For years, most small businesses have relied on tape back up systems to protect their data, and for years, this was their best option. Other systems were just too expensive or designed for larger companies.
But the era of the tape drive is quickly coming to an end or at least it should be!
While running my IT services company Everon Technology Services I used to lay awake at night worrying about my clients tape back up systems.
Why?
Because they are so unreliable that I couldnt ever truly feel confident that my clients data would be recoverable if something went bad.
There are a lot of reasons why tape back up systems arent great:
They rarely ever back up all of the data they are supposed to there is almost always some error that prevents a complete back up
Tapes wear out, making recovery of data very hard or impossible
The limited capacity of tape drives mean businesses usually have to pick and choose what data they want backed up, and inevitably miss something
Tape back up systems require manual effort from someone to change tapes which often doesnt get done
Recovery of data can take a very long time oftentimes days of expensive work.
I could go on and on.
So what should a small business do? Fortunately, they have a lot of good options now, including:
Using an internet back up solution
Using a local NAS/SAN solution
Using both
I highly recommend that small businesses invest in a solution that does both local data back up and internet back up the risks of losing data with a solution like this in place go way down.
Whatever solution you choose, make sure it has the following criteria:
Automatic it should back up your data without manual effort from you
Frequent find a solution that will back up your data at least every hour
High capacity you shouldnt have to pick and choose which data to back up because your back up solution doesnt have enough capacity
Fast you want a solution that backs up data and restores data quickly
Local and offsite ideally you have a solution that does both. The local back up is great for speed and ease of recovery, but the offsite storage of data gives you another level of protection.
You can find many solutions that meet all of these criteria, and price points have dropped dramatically in the last 18 months, making them affordable for almost all small businesses.
Get rid of that tape back up system before its too late!
by: The Mavster
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