Why companies using tape drives desperately need to consider Upgrading

Tape drives just cannot be trusted. Did you know that they fail 100% of the time? With a Raid array, a business’s IT department may have time to hot swap failing disk drives before entire Raid 4, 5, or 10 systems go down. Plus, your tape drive will only be AWOL when you need it most. Since you can only retrieve data from a compatible tape drive, there is a good chance that an older, aging tape drive is no longer made, cannot be upgraded, and you cannot even order another model. This means even if your tape drive does not completely fail misreading data, you still may not be able to access the data that is there.

Are you prepared to lose an entire day’s work? Unlike some backup programs, tape drives cannot open any files. They also cannot perform continual backups, as some Raid array systems can. This makes them more obsolete. At the end of the day, if the system crashes, you still can lose all your work and have to begin again. Newer systems designed for data recovery perform virtual backups. It may take a snapshot of your work every 15 minutes. This way if your system fails, you won’t lose all your work for the day. The other good news is that the system can also backup all the other files you have left open before you headed home.

Tape drives do not save everything!

If you aren’t careful, tape drives will make a liar out of you. This is because they do not always record what you think they are recording. While it is true that tape drives will record your files, this doesn’t mean that your computer settings, data that you have typed in, or printer or Internet settings are getting saved. If a fire occurs, you may simply have to rebuild your backup server and you still lose data. Unlike the newer Raid systems or Mac external hard disk drives, you may not even be able to pay a professional to recover your sensitive information. Many businesses have moved to newer technology in order to protect what is most valuable to them. There may not be many specialists who have experience retrieving data off tape drives and converting it into a more usable form.

Isn’t it nice to know that data recovery doesn’t have to take days to complete?  If you haven’t made the switch from tape drive to a Raid system or an external or internal hard drive, what is holding you back? We recover data from hard drives, Memory sticks, Raid systems and more.