Reasons Why You Should Not Rely On Old-School Backup Tapes
As we get older it’s always fond to think and praise “old-school” ways as the best way of doing things. And when it comes to things such as work ethics, cooking and music, shout out to Toni Braxton, we can find that to be true. But “old-school” is not necessarily the best when it comes to technology.
Magnetic data storage was discovered in the early 1950s, and became popular in the latter part of the twentieth century in the form of floppy disks and cassettes. Many institutions still feel comfortable with this “old-school” method use this type of technology to backup all of their essential data. But, is this truly a wise choice? So, here are a few reasons to not trust your valuable historical data to magnetic tape.
Environmental Factors
Tapes and discs can be adversely effected by environmental factors, and easily damaged. Some of these factors are:
- Water
- Temperature Extremes
- Dirt
- Magnetic objects
When read, the magnetic tape passes over a read head, allowing exposure to the air and any contaminants it carries with it. These can get directly on the tape, or even into the tape drive. Additionally, tapes can be exposed to the elements when transported to a different location. It only takes a small amount of dust to ruin an entire cassette.
In contrast, hard drives and other hermetically sealed data storage options, such as those used in Cloud data storage, are protected from dirt and dust, and will protect data better.
Data Transfer Issues
Problems can be experienced if you try to get your tape to work in a different tape drive. Over time, alignment heads will move slightly, which can make a recording unique to that particular drive. In other words, there will be an issue reading any tape from your drive on any other drive, even if the type or brand are identical. Pray that your tape drive keeps working forever.
Inefficient
Tapes cannot be accessed randomly and have to be viewed sequentially. So, if you need a file recorded at the middle or end of the cassette, then you may have to search or read the entire tape to get that file. This takes way more time than random access of files.
On a hard drive you can easily access a specific location and quickly pull the file you need.
Failure Rates
Magnetic tapes fail up to 20-50% of the time! Sad to say it is a common occurrence for a tape cartridge to become corrupt and valuable information is gone forever. Most of the time there is no prior indication to help prepare you.
Additionally, due to the linear nature of tapes, if any portion of the tape malfunctions, then all subsequent data is lost. This means, if the beginning of the tapes becomes corrupt, then you cannot access the remaining data.
In conclusion, old-school is not always the best particularly when it comes to technology and protecting valuable, necessary company data.