Tape Backup Systems Are Obsolete!
Remember the days when we used tapes (cassettes, VHS) as our preferred media? In the mid-nineties we moved to CDs and DVDs. Today we are moving into the real digital age with MP3, MP4, MPEG, video streaming, etc. - all digitized, stored and accessed from flash, RAM and hard drives.
Let me remind you what is wrong with tape backup:
- It’s slow (recording, rotating, etc.)
- Quality is relatively low
- It’s not reliable (how many of your tapes fell apart or got lost?)
Proponents of tape backup systems try to address these inherent problems by offering engineering work-arounds, but there’s little they can do for issues like data restoration capabilities and slow recovery windows.
So here is the question: If you already moved your personal media files away from tapes into the digital age and are now synching your iPod with your laptop (e.g. disk-to-disk backup), why on earth would you treat your critical data/data center any differently?
Today as RAID storage is becoming more and more affordable, drive capacities are rapidly increasing (1TB per drive!!) and other factors continue to drive the shift to disk-to-disk architecture (auto MAID, replication / data recovery, WORM), I really can’t think of any good reasons to use tape backup systems any more.
If you think of any reasons, I’ll be very happy if you can share them with me!
Comments
I agree,
Tapes are definitely obsolete (still fun for nostalgic purposes though), but is it possible to transfer all taped data to a hard drive or disk or only certain material? For example, just like you can't record over a VHS movie bought from the store (unless you alter the tape itself), would it be possible to transfer data from a movie you bought from a video store? Is this kind of data transfer only possible with material on blank tapes you recorded first hand yourself? I'm asking this because I know there are several services that advertise as being able to convert VHS to DVD, but I'm not quite sure how the process works. Also, is it possible to only convert VHS data to a disk in the regular movie/dvd format? Or is it possible to convert as a data cd that would open and be readable on a pc, and not one that would play in a standard dvd player? I'm curious about this as to how the process of transferring to a flash drive or something would work. Since you mentioned it in your post, I was thinking of buying a flash drive specifically to transfer some of my old VHS tapes (that way I could skip having to pay an outside service to do it) -- but I want to make sure I have all of the details first. I did a little poking around online look for reviews and articles on the different flash drives out there, like this one, but none of them went into detail about how to use a flash drive when converting old VHS tapes to digital. I was hoping you could shed a bit more light on the subject before I go through with this purchase. Thanks in advance, and if anyone else has anything share, I'd love to hear your feedback as well. Great blog by the way. Keep up the good work!
Posted by: Matthew | June 4, 2007 02:14 AM
Because of our large volume sizes, we had to go to a disk to disk solution. I still use tape for off site storage.
Posted by: Terry | May 2, 2007 10:12 AM