• Troy Mclure (unregistered) in reply to whicker
    whicker:
    el jaybird:
    So the only reason they had a backup, the six-month-old one, was because six months ago, one of them was away and forgot to do their job?
    I think that's the only logical explanation.

    Now to see who forgot to back it up (to reward that person, not punish), was the functioning tape from the basement or the third floor safe? Sounds like a good logic puzzle.

    The doctor is the mother. Is that the answer?

  • Doppel (unregistered) in reply to NiceWTF
    NiceWTF:
    SenorLapiz:
    Wow. Tapes.

    In this day and age of DVDs and external terabyte drives, who would use slow, sequential, cross-system incompatible devices like tapes for their important data backup?

    Someone who cares whether his data will still be readable in 10 years.

    Is it OK to do 20 instead of 10? I have some 20-year-old tapes. You have a machine that can read them?

  • rro (unregistered)

    People arguing about tape being much cheaper than disk are wrong. Tapes are $150/TB (without counting tape drives). Disks are $200/TB in the current sweet spot. But add all the inefficiencies, inconveniences and expensive hardware required by tapes, and you easily lose the 25% savings on the price of the raw media.

    Disks: can be kept permanently online, can recover data from backup in seconds, allow random access for immediate recovery, have faster throughput, do not require expensive tape drives or robotic arms to handle them, do not need to be constantly inserted/ejected (but can be hotswapped if necessary), can be put in RAID arrays (ZFS rules), have higher storage density (48 TB in 4RU with Sun x4500), etc.

    My friend's company back up their data on hundreds of servers with something like 8-9000 SATA disks total. They migrated from tape 3 years ago and save hundreds of thousands of dollars per year in operating costs.

  • rro (unregistered)

    Tape is only usefully in some very specific scenarios. But basically it is 95% dead ;-)

    The only reason you should stay with tape is if you have an existing tape-based backup strategy that works relatively well and if the migration costs to disk are too high and cannot be amortized in less than 3-4 years.

  • Raw (unregistered) in reply to rro

    If you want to have off-site backups, tape is the king. Data loss due to ordinary hardware failure or stupid users is easy to restore from a disk, but for other problems such as fire, theft, lightning strikes, flooding and so on, you need off-site backups.

  • LTO_Moe (unregistered) in reply to Joe
    Joe:
    LTO_Moe:
    Freddy Bob:
    SenorLapiz:
    On the other hand, a dormant DVD has a relatively infinite shelf life.
    What's relative infinity?
    Well, there's Special Relativity, and then there's "Special" Relativity...

    In Theory of Computer Science they teach about countably infinite sets. Maybe that's what he was thinking about? What's next, he's going to tell us DVDs > Church-Turing Thesis.

    What's his favorite theory? The Pumping Lemma? Are DVDs > Pumping Lemma?

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumping_lemma

    Hmm. Um, I was thinking more of like stinky(captcha), drooling, helmet-wearing special relativity. Even after reading the WP entry, I still can't figure out how pumping lemmings relates to clubbing seals.

  • rro (unregistered) in reply to Raw
    Raw:
    If you want to have off-site backups, tape is the king.

    People have this idea that disks are so fragile that they cannot be transported off-site... How silly.

    Yes, precaution should be taken and good packaging is required, but so it is for tapes. Do you drop boxes containing tapes on the floor ? No. So take the same precaution with disks and no accident will happen.

    Beside, with disks you can do something you cannot do with tape: you can ship "RAID arrays" to your off-site location: ship N disks par of a RAID array with 1 or 2 parity disks (RAID 5 or 6). It means if 1 or 2 disks fail during transport or are lost, stolen, etc, you lose no data.

    This is exactly what I designed for the small company I am working for: a 2 x 5.0 TB disk-based off-site backup strategy. We have 2 sets of 12 x 500-GB hotswappable SATA disks assembled in 2 independent raidz2 ZFS pools (5.0 TB of usable space on each pool). Every week someone remove the 12 disks from the backup server (1st set), put them in 2 Pelican boxes and take them home. We rotate the 2 sets of disks so at any time there is always 1 set of disk that is off-site.

  • LTO_Moe (unregistered) in reply to Franz Kafka
    Franz Kafka:
    LTO_Moe:
    Tape rocks over DVD. I mean seriously, 4.7GB vs up to 1.6TB, yes that's TeraBytes per cartridge. Even Magneto-Optical drives and libraries are starting to fall out of the market, because they simply don't have the storage capacity or transfer rate of tape.

    Yeah, I have somewhat lower reqs, and DDS3 tapes run about $5 ea. for 12G uncompressed, which is plenty. Is $50/yr worth having your data after a crash?

    DDS3? Ack! Run away! At the very least, get your hands on a used DLT7000 (like there's any other kind these days). You can pick them up for less than $150 and used DLT media is also cheap. DDS/DAT (all of it) is junk. You'll cut your backup time in half and get significantly more reliable backups. And more importantly, more reliable restores.

    If you want 12-15MB/sec (5 to 7 times faster than DDS), pick up an LTO-1 drive (<$400). Media is more expensive, but an order of magnitude more reliable than DLT.

  • Not a Robot (unregistered)

    My company used to have one of those tape backup things a number of years ago - a NT based cabinet server with lots of blinkenlights and an expensive DLT tape changer robot and a couple additional boxes that needed to be backed up as well.

    It never worked. We tested a number of different backup software that were expensive as well (it's appalling about how much they charge for software that just copies files from one place to another and doesn't even work) as well as a number of updates and I think the robot was sent out to be double-checked for brokenness as well. But nothing helped. The backup software makers blamed it on the robot and the robot makers blamed the backup software. And of course the only way to know whether it worked or not was to check the backup software's log which would just state that some hexadecimal error code happened and the program just gave up. And yes, the backup software was advertised as one working very well with the robot.

    Later we ditched the whole thing - the server and the tape robot - and went to a linux-based raid array file server and external-HD backup solution. There's a number of disks in rotation, one on a shelf waiting, one plugged in, and the rest off-site. So far it has worked well enough without anyone having to touch the system apart from swapping disks.

  • Marcel (unregistered) in reply to Ryan
    Ryan:
    Marcel should have checked the next tape on the bottom floor. The chances of it containing a recent backup are the same as the next tape on the 3rd floor, which he did check.

    Hi, I'm the Marcel from the story I did check it, the newest one was 6 months old, wich is equally useless as a backup from a week ago. You have to chuck out all the data anyway. after a certain number of transactions, the database becomes to "old" to legally restore, and that number is hit somewhere halfway T +2 days.

    Also, with the intire database, which constitutes about 80gb (customer/book pictures are hell), it's not very economic to backup to DVD every day. Not to mention they'd have to hire someone to change the DVD's every time.

  • (cs) in reply to SenorLapiz

    Shelf life of a burned CD is approx. 5 year. I think a dvd is about the same.

    http://computerworld.com/hardwaretopics/storage/story/0,10801,107607,00.html

    So infinite equals 5 ???

    SenorLapiz:
    jkupski:
    SenorLapiz:
    Wow. Tapes.

    In this day and age of DVDs and external terabyte drives, who would use slow, sequential, cross-system incompatible devices like tapes for their important data backup?

    Well... kudos for attempting to backup at least.

    You're kidding, right?

    Who in their right mind would use DVDs for backup? External hard drives? Better, but "moving parts" in your backup media isn't the best solution.

    Tapes are still the best option in terms of cost, speed, capacity, and shelf life. Even in a big "disk to disk" backup system, the data is probably going to end up on a tape eventually.

    A tape has better shelf life than a DVD? Now you're the one telling jokes.

    A tape breaks, molds, erases in magnetic fields, and must be kept within relatively strict environmental parameters. On the other hand, a dormant DVD has a relatively infinite shelf life. And they are dirt cheap. And they have no moving parts, unlike tape cartridges. Tapes are probably one of the worst storage media choices these days.

  • Synonymous Awkward (unregistered) in reply to Marcel
    SenorLapiz:
    Wow. Tapes.

    In this day and age of DVDs and external terabyte drives, who would use slow, sequential, cross-system incompatible devices like tapes for their important data backup?

    Pretty much anyone who doesn't work for the companies behind these "TAPE IS DEAD" adverts that seem to crop up every few years (at least, I am assuming they use their own products).

    Marcel:
    Not to mention they'd have to hire someone to change the DVDs every time.
    I can only imagine how well that would have worked out. Probably they would have used the same disc repeatedly in the same backup session.

    Also, for someone who works at a library, your spelling and grammar could use some work.

  • Anonymous Coward (unregistered) in reply to jkupski

    If you want to use tapes for backups, fine. Personally I've seen them fail too many times (and this story is no exception).

  • (cs) in reply to SenorLapiz
    SenorLapiz:
    A tape has better shelf life than a DVD? Now you're the one telling jokes.

    A tape breaks, molds, erases in magnetic fields, and must be kept within relatively strict environmental parameters. On the other hand, a dormant DVD has a relatively infinite shelf life.

    Good one. Heh-heh.

    You WERE joking, right?

    A mass-production pressed DVD may have a shelf life of decades (the media hasn't been around that long, so it's all extrapolation). If you keep it in ideal conditions. A burnt DVD? 5 years if you're lucky, 10 if you're very lucky.

  • James (unregistered) in reply to SenorLapiz

    Tapes are more resilient to moving around than hard disks, therefore better for offsite backup. DVDs are slow and dont have near the capacity required.

    He should have been checking those backups at least monthly! Plus most backup software should be set to verify upon backup completion.

  • James (unregistered) in reply to rro

    Good luck to the guy carrying 12 hard disks off site each week! :)

    I back up that amount of data to LTO3 tapes every week onto 8 small tapes. Then do a daily incremental every day onto 1 tape. Much easier for our tape collection guy to handle.

    I've had tapes fail now and again but I've had far more portable hard disk failures in my experience.

  • RichGK (unregistered) in reply to rro

    Ah, the accidents never happen approach, excellent!

  • RichGK (unregistered) in reply to RichGK

    That was in answer to

    "People have this idea that disks are so fragile that they cannot be transported off-site... How silly.

    Yes, precaution should be taken and good packaging is required, but so it is for tapes. Do you drop boxes containing tapes on the floor ? No. So take the same precaution with disks and no accident will happen. "

    BTW!

  • (cs) in reply to Bob
    Bob:
    SenorLapiz:
    In this day and age of DVDs and external terabyte drives, who would use slow, sequential, cross-system incompatible devices like tapes for their important data backup?

    You would be surprised at the number of tape backups that are in place. My company recently decided to backup some servers "at long last" and they are done with a tape based system. If it ain't broke don't fix it.

    which is the reason that so many companies still use (and new companies still adopt the usage of) tapes. they just don't break. ever.

    I worked in a Radio Shack store (just before Circuit City bought them out). nightly backups were done on tape. tape that was over 10 years old. the server that was being backed up was replaced several times, but the tape drive just kept going. The place I'm at now uses RAID, plus an external HDD, plus tapes. guess which one hasn't had any hardware failures yet..you got it..the tape drive. We used to use DVDs but they broke too often, and didn't store enough data (we need about 75GB, which is something around 16 DVDs, or one tape)

  • Azd (unregistered)

    I find this story hard to believe. The restore failed at 10%? I've never seen a restore fail before 99%, or as soon as you've left for the weekend.

  • Sgt. Preston (unregistered)

    This isn't my area of expertise, but I'm curious. Rather than physically schlep tapes, DVDs, hard disks, wax tablets, or whatever home with you and rotate them back in to work, wouldn't it be easier to achieve off-site back-up by piping the data over the network to an off-site storage system? What's the down side? Maybe once you reach a certain volume of data this solution would be too slow. Would a regional library need to back up that much data? In some cases, I suppose there would also be security issues. Any thoughts?

  • Paul (unregistered) in reply to Pingmaster

    A lot of the 'arguments' about tape/disk/dvd depend essentially on how much data you need to backup, and possibly how long you want to keep it.

    If your typical backup is 10GB or less, and you only want to keep backups for a year or so, then DVD seems an ideal medium. It's certainly a winner over tape IMHO.

    If your typical backup is of the order of hundreds of GB, then a decent hard disk backup is probably best - especially if it supports D2D - you backup to disk, then it copies that disk to another disk. The one we use supports copying to a remote disk over our VPN, so we have two sites, each with an offsite backup at the other site. You could alternatively have the backup copy to a local portable drive that you take offsite. The problem with this is the period covered by the backups. The software we use keeps 25 versions of files before they get overwritten - not a specific time. For us that's fine, but for other people it might be an issue.

    If your typical backup is in the order of a few TB or more, and/or you have strict requirements for length of storage then I think it generally has to be tape. HDD still has advantages, but becomes less convenient. However, here you're talking about autoloaders with multiple drives so BIG money - for the person with 10GB to backup it's a bit of an overkill..

    As well as our HDD backup which is done every night, and nicely does the offsite backup for us with zero effort (yes we do test it periodically - but you need less tests with HDD backup than with tape), we generally do a backup to a 200GB LTO tape every few months for our 'archive' store. The tapes aren't that much cheaper than a HDD, but are smaller, so are easier to store long term.

  • (cs) in reply to Sgt. Preston
    Sgt. Preston:
    This isn't my area of expertise, but I'm curious. Rather than physically schlep tapes, DVDs, hard disks, wax tablets, or whatever home with you and rotate them back in to work, wouldn't it be easier to achieve off-site back-up by piping the data over the network to an off-site storage system? What's the down side? Maybe once you reach a certain volume of data this solution would be too slow. Would a regional library need to back up that much data? In some cases, I suppose there would also be security issues. Any thoughts?
    There are providers that do this - we use one. They have a backup agent that's installed on the server (Windows only, but we backup the Linux fileserver through filesharing) we need to backup off-site, and the backup runs nightly. The software does automatic differential backups, so each night we only upload about 100-500MB (the total amount of data backed up is ~23GB currently; the backup is done in ~20 minutes, though most of this time is used to scan for the changed files). Daily backups for the last 2 weeks are kept at the remote facility, and with compression this amounts to 14GB currently (we pay the space used on the backup servers).
  • el jaybird (unregistered) in reply to Joe
    Joe:
    Pumping Lemma

    Is that legal in your state?

  • (cs) in reply to Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward:
    If you want to use tapes for backups, fine. Personally I've seen them fail too many times (and this story is no exception).

    Go rent a DVD from the video store so you can see how many times they fail...

  • Morgan (unregistered) in reply to seymore15074

    Just backup to gmail.

  • Chris (unregistered) in reply to SenorLapiz

    When you're trying to backup many terabytes of data on a daily basis and store the data offsite DVDs and external hard drives just aren't practical. Tapes are the easiest way to backup that much data on a daily basis and be able to store them offsite.

  • Ian (unregistered) in reply to SenorLapiz
    SenorLapiz:
    Wow. Tapes.

    In this day and age of DVDs and external terabyte drives, who would use slow, sequential, cross-system incompatible devices like tapes for their important data backup?

    Well... kudos for attempting to backup at least.

    Because one tape can store 1TB of data, and when you're dealing with hard drive clusters of 8+TB, you're glad you're not backing up 5000 DVDs every night.

    Tape loaders and a backup schedule make short work of this.

  • Dana (unregistered) in reply to hachu

    "Who in this day and age of DVDs and external terabyte drives, who would use slow, sequential, cross-system incompatible devices like tapes for their important data backup?"

    Are you familiar with the local library? They have neither the budget nor the technical expertise to do anything complicated.

    Step out of your narrow little tech world and rejoin reality.

    Captcha: digdug

  • (cs)

    Hmm. For some reason I read that as "Circle of Strafe."

    Mmmm, Doom.

  • John (unregistered) in reply to hachu

    When it comes to the final storage location... Tape.. All the way.

    I do 10TB each weekend. First it hits a 24TB disk staging unit. Then we destage it to tape. Then we make another copy to go offsite. The offsite copy fits on 19 LTO-3 Tapes and takes about 24 hours to duplicate from disk. (after 4 weeks, the offsite copy comes back onsite and we throw them into the scratch pool to be used again)

    Now, if we went with DVD's rather than tape, we would need to send about 2,400 DVD's offsite. Disk drives? 10 of them (The data is already compressed) assuming 1TB drives. Now imagine 10 of these drives being tossed into a box and handed to a delivery guy. Compared to tapes, the box would be huge if you added the correct amount of padding.

    Oh yeah, we pay $40 per tape vs a lot more for a 1TB drive.

    The final thing in favor of the tape is the fact that our onsite library holds 800 tapes and consumes practically no power. Access time for data older than 2 weeks (remember, the 24TB disk farm holds recent data) may be 2 minutes or so, but who cares.

    Yes, we are looking at data de-duplication products. But I need to see them in use before I trust them for the long term. They still dont solve the offsite issue though.

  • not Jan (unregistered)

    Just a side note: in the region where this happened (the names give us a pretty good idea), hundreds of thousands of people are named "Jan", but only a handful of them, if any, are female. I think the "her"s in the story need a correction.

  • Kuba (unregistered) in reply to SenorLapiz
    SenorLapiz:
    Wow. Tapes.

    In this day and age of DVDs and external terabyte drives, who would use slow, sequential, cross-system incompatible devices like tapes for their important data backup?

    A good tape drive will stream faster than a DVD writer will.

    Tapes also have an almost infinite lifetime, compared to writable media which over time disintegrates. None of my CD-Rs from 10-12 years ago can be read anymore, most have their data layer peeling from the substrate.

    My current experience with writeable disc media (CDs, etc) indicates that it cannot be considered for archival storage, unless you define archival to mean 10 years or less.

    A tape is better protected from the elements. You'd have to work pretty hard to destroy a tape - opening its plastic housing and unreeling it is a necessity. On the other hand, with a CD/DVD, dropping it on the floor and having someone walk over it is sometimes all it takes.

    The tapes that I use have a capacity of dozens of DVDs. I don't know exactly how even I would use DVDs in my scenario, they'd imply someone sitting there at night and swapping discs. No, loader is not an option due to financial reasons - a $600 tape drive is much cheaper than a DVD loader (more reliable, too!).

    I have a good source of Dell tape drives on eBay and those end up being cheap and so far 100% reliable.

    Today's "commodity" tape technology stores about 0.5TB on a single tape, and, given a healthy drive and reasonable storage conditions, that tape is fully expected to be readable 50 years from now.

    Cheers!

  • Kuba (unregistered) in reply to SenorLapiz
    SenorLapiz:
    A tape has better shelf life than a DVD? Now you're the one telling jokes.

    A tape breaks, molds, erases in magnetic fields, and must be kept within relatively strict environmental parameters. On the other hand, a dormant DVD has a relatively infinite shelf life. And they are dirt cheap. And they have no moving parts, unlike tape cartridges. Tapes are probably one of the worst storage media choices these days.

    It's hard to erase contemporary tapes in magnetic fields, unless you put it in an MRI machine. So called "bulk tape erasers" for audio tapes hardly do anything to backup tapes (my experience so far).

    I have CD-Rs that are about 10-12 years old and none of them are fully readable. They came from multiple vendors and were written with different recorders.

    The whole "no moving parts" just made me laugh. You spin a DVD up to do anything useful with it. Same with a tape -- when it's on a shelf, it doesn't move, and nothing wears out. It's not like you need to keep the tape a spinnin' on the shelf.

    As for tapes breaking, well, I don't think that contemporary tape drives break tapes. Has never happened for me.

    As for mold: well, if a tape molds, it's only the outside that will. Leader, maybe a turn or two under it. An LTO tape I've opened up recently is wound pretty much air-tight between the layers, and you'd be hard pressed to completely destroy it just by letting mold grow on it. I don't think that whatever the tapes and their housing are made of are good mold food.

    Recordable optical disc media in general don't have infinite shelf life. Contemporary tapes, devoid of the substrate-adhesion problems common in say 70s, are meant to last forever. I'd fully expect one to be readable 100-200 years from now, given a PC & a tape drive preserved somewhere in a safe. Even if the tape itself were to be stored say in the glovebox of your car. I've made a test with an LTO-2 tape -- drove it around in the glovebox for a year, no problems. I'm pretty sure it experienced temperatures between -10F and 120F.

    Recordable CDs I keep in my car for too long (in their cases, not used in the car) start exhibiting higher error rates (correctable errors, but still).

    I'm no big fan of tapes, but for now they are the only sane thing around to store data for long periods of time. That, and internet storage (where they just copy it over to newer hardware for ya).

    Cheers!

  • Rhialto (unregistered) in reply to SenorLapiz
    SenorLapiz:
    On the other hand, a dormant DVD has a relatively infinite shelf life.
    I bet you have never read a proper test of dvd burning quality. Many burners create dvds that start with so many errors already that they are unacceptable. And have personal experience with a supposedly good burner and brand-name cd-rs which go bad in a couple of years.
  • (cs)

    It remembers me the day I took an half-day off to visit my ophthalmologist. I was forced to take an half-day off because it was impossible to get an appointment outside work hours. Because ophtalmologists are often overbooked in France, I got the appointment 4 monthes ago. The morning I went to the doctors's practice, I seat in the waiting room and... wait for the ophtalmologist to call me. One, two people passed... 45min later people arrived after me started to pass ! Strange.. a women was speaking sharply with the secretary drew my attention. She had the same problem, so I went to the secretary's desktop to get some info. It was it : about 4 monthes ago, a friday evening, the ophtalmologist RESTORED it's database with tuesday data instead of BACKUP it. I got my appointment a wednesday. Guess what happened ? The secretary was soooo sorry, but not me. I put half a day off only to wait 1h for noting. Then I got a new appointedment, but never returned to this ophtalmologist. The day of my appointment, the secretary called me "Mr -censored-, you had an appointment today and didn't come..." "Oups, sooo sorry, I restored the DB of my PDA instead of backup it, so I lost this agenda entry. Asta la vista !".

  • DavidTC (unregistered)

    Has anyone noticed this doesn't make any sense anyway? Even assuming the plan was actually for both of them to go in the same direction, it makes no sense at all.

    Why would you keep fresh tapes in a fireproof safe? Especially since it either required a four floor walk to get the tape out, or a four floor walk to store it, or some combination thereof. You put a new stack of tapes next to the server, back up on one of them, and then put it in the closest safe, not wander up and down four floors with tapes.

    And why did neither operators notice they didn't appear to be filling their safe? Doesn't that seem somewhat absurd? At some point it must have twigged that the 'stack of tapes' was merely a shelf, and every single day they were putting a tape in exactly the same place.

    And why didn't anyone notice they never need to buy more tapes? As their backup plan apparently wasn't ever supposed to reuse tapes, they'd need two a week.

    I mean, this story not only requires one stupid mistake (One of them getting it backwards.) but a fairly stupid design in the first place, two very unobservant operators, and no one that ever looks at the plan that says 'two backup tapes a week', and the purchase orders for backup tapes.

  • manicsquirrel (unregistered)

    Maybe I'm just uninformed. Tape maybe okay, but how do you restore a Windows server or Windows domain controller operating system and all its data from a tape? All the tape backup software I've seen is garbage. It saves the system files, sure, but you have to install the oeprating system from scratch and then reload the system state and data.

    For the small businesses I service, we put in a NAS with redundant drives and removeable drive cartridges. The employees rotate out a cartridge each day and take one offsite. We then use Acronis True Image server to image the server. Compression and transfer rate are very good.

    It takes about 15 minutes to bring a server back from the dead with this combination.

    Of course, I'm always wanting to find a better way and I do listen to advice from those who know better. So let me have it...

  • Melchior (unregistered)

    Tape is certainly NOT irrelevant. It's still unrivaled when dealing with enterprise or even large corporate level data.

    That said, in the lower Soho/SMB end of the market there are some major new players no one seems to have mentioned yet;

    Serial Attached Scsi (or SAS) hard drives. As far as i'm aware Dell is the only vendor currently offering these, but they have both an external and internal unit availble with SAS "cartridges" up to 320gb (compressed, 160 uncompressed) at $1/GB. Not as cheap if you scale it, but you're looking at under $1000 to get yourself all the benefits of hard drive backups, plus the form-factor, durability and portability of tape and that includes the storage media.

    http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/pvaul_rd1000?c=us&l=en&s=bsd&cs=04

    I currently use one of these in my backup schema. Daily backups go to an external drive, twice a week there is a backup to a storage array and then once a week the SAS is used to backup all critical files. My current backup scheme goes like this:

  • SuperWasabiDave (unregistered)

    I can only say one thing to you guys: IDIOTS. I also assume that your parents Durex 'backup' failed ;-)

  • Bob Belloff (unregistered)

    Interesting thread. I use Quantum DLT-S4, which for about $90 a pop gets me 1.6TB of data compressed. I can't touch that with disk.

    I also use a D2D2T setup and the backups are taken to disk and then destaged to the tapes.

    I have had very few tape failures over the years, and I can not recall ever bringing a tape back from storage to find it has failed.

    That said, I think a combination of disk technologies and tape is probably best, especially where data might need to be archived, yet readily available.

    As for the guy who said DVDs were better than tape, what are you backing up? A couple of Excel files at the 2-person office you work in? Get real.

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