Today’s advancing broadband technology has allowed large amounts of data to be placed online very cheaply. However, the reliability of internet hosts and the possible difficulties with ensuring continual access means traditional backup technologies must not be ignored. As a result, the format war between disk and tape continues.

Storage formats such as tape have enjoyed year upon year of being in pole position as the format of choice for secondary backup, though in recent years hard disk technologies have caught up with the aging medium. Hard disk technologies, however, deliver a more realistic approach to data security by removing many of the usage restraints of tape technology, while allowing the following advantages:

• Faster backup and recovery
• Instant failover to maintain constant availability of your data
• Improved reliability
• Less maintenance: no more need to clean your tape drives
• Random access for single files
• Lower costs

One fundamental challenge for hard disk technology is to prove its ability to provide cost effective off-site security, something of a hardship for a fixed disk technology. Unlike tape, disk technologies are traditionally not as removable and have to be handled carefully due to the drive mechanics being transported with the media. Off-site security, therefore can be a difficult, cumbersome job.

Disk technology has been attempting to achieve off-site security and archiving in three main ways:

Remote site replication

Remote site replication is an attractive option as it can be deployed in a way that removes the need to take data cartridges off-site each night for remote security. However, this method is not only reliant on your business having more than one office location, but also on an abundance of budget that many SMB’s can’t justify.


3 stage solutions – disk-to-disk-to-tape (D2D2T)

The D2D2T solution meets the demands of both high performance backup and the ability to take data off-site, which is one of the more complex choices for companies that have a single location but require both high performance backup and a third layer of hardware to provide off-site security and archiving ability.

Removable disk technology, disk to removable disk (D2RD)

If the one and only benefit of choosing disk technology over tape is to improve performance and reliability and conversely the reason for choosing tape technology over disk is simply because of removability then why not provide a disk technology that’s removable?

The challenge for this type of media is to keep the capacities growing, in order to remain within the key capacity points of small and medium businesses.

Your data heath check - security you should have for your network data