Online Backup

In this business age of computers and servers, backup of their critical data is one of the most important aspects to be considered by any business, no matter how large or small. This short article looks at the pros and cons of tape backup compared with online backup.

In the event of a problem or disaster, it is in the interest of every business to be able to quickly backup and restore all of their precious data. Unfortunately, tape backup is renowned for being far below the efficiency that people expect from it and data recovery from tapes can be as low as 60% accurate. This leaves 40% of a company or organisations critical data at risk of corruption and loss.

There are several reasons why tapes are unreliable. First of all they are susceptible to human errors and data backup is reliant on people carrying out the backups at the prescribed times and intervals. Unfortunately there are no figures for the percentage of computed business data that is not backed up on a strictly regular basis; but I would expect it to be more than 30%. That is over 30% of businesses and corporations that face potential disaster or even worse business failure, through being reliant on tape backup by people.

Large amounts of data need to be stored on multiple tapes and need constant monitoring and have to be changed when full. Tapes are also prone to failures, including mechanical, thermal, magnetic and other influences. The effective life span of the reliability of a tape is about 12 months and after that they start gradually decaying and potentially begin to lose the stored information.

What happens to the tapes at the end of the day, are they stored in the same room as the computer or server? If so they are at risk from theft, fire, flood or the similar disaster that will affect the hardware; rendering data backup impossible.

Tapes can be transported to other places or premises at the end of the day; but unless they are going to be kept in extremely secure circumstances, they are at risk from the same hazards as may befall them if kept with the computer or server. Plus there is the added hazard of damage, theft or loss in transit.

Then there is the cost of the tape hardware, the tapes and the labour costs involved in operating this inefficient system; making online backup by far the most cost effective and safe method of protecting the precious data In comparison to tapes, online data backup is much more reliable, faster, efficient and far less susceptible to mechanical or human error; as online data backups are fully automated once set up.

Online backup eliminates all of the threats posed by tape backup, by eliminating human errors and disasters that my affect the premises of the company or organisation. A good online data backup company makes 2 backups of the encrypted data entrusted with it and stores it in premises safer than a bank vault, in a stable country. Every possible risk is taken into consideration and protected against by every conceivable failsafe method.

So, if you should have a disaster, your data will be 100% secure and instantly restorable, not on low efficiency tapes, but stored on state of the art servers for instant recovery. For more information, please visit the experts who will happily advise you on all aspects of online data backup; http://www.securidata.co.uk