Tapes and tape drives are used because they are /more/ reliable.  Modern
hard drives are not meant to be portable.  To much shaking, one drop,
heat and cold extremes.  Tapes endure these things infinitely better
than a hard drive.

Furthermore a good tape backup is actually /much/ more expensive than
backing up with hard drives ($ per gig).  They have more/better data
error correction, and are made only for backup.

That being said, hard drive backups are becoming more and more common.
 It is a mistake, though, to move a hard drive more than a few times a
month.  (I do it weeky, but I also have another backup on tape which is
taken offiste, and another onsite HD backup which is not moved.)  They
simply fail at a higher rate than those that are permanently mounted
inside a machine.

You need to be careful weighing the tradeoffs when looking at
reliability, cost, and maintenance.  It's a pain to have an offsite
backup, but it's a little better than a firesafe backup.  It's more
expensive to do tape and HD backup, but you're nearly tripling your
reliability.

Good luck!

-Adam

Chris Loiacono wrote:

>I apologize for re-opening this thread....but I am trying to put together a
>back-up strategy for a small (6 station) peer to peer windows network and
>some of the thoughts that showed up here have me a bit uncertain when I
>combine them with what I'm finding when I research the subject elsewhere. I
>tend to trust the technical opinions of list members  - especially when
>compared to those of technical sale people trying to sell me on their
>choice...so please, check out my thinking and reply if you like...
>
>1. HDD's seem most logical to me - lowest cost per Gig, fast read and write
>cycles. Swappable drives in arrays such as RAID seem to make even more
>sense - pull the drive, put in a fire box and insert the alternate drive.
>Yet these seem to be less available and the cost seems the same as it was 5
>yrs ago - indicating that this is less than popular.
>
>2. Tape must be less reliable and is definitely slower. Plus there is the
>added cost of consumables.  I am finding that many large networks are backed
>up on tape - perhaps because the economics of buying many tapes is better
>than buying many hard drives. Many small networks are backed up on tape, and
>there are still many offerings in this area.
>
>
>Is there a technical reason that tape is still so widely used, and am I
>missing something?
>What really is the medium of choice for back-up?
>
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