Tape backup: Often old and confused, but quite cheap
Summary
Those are the findings of a survey of more than 800 IT professionals about their use of tape backup carried out by data recovery specialist Kroll Ontrack in the UK, France, Germany, Poland, Italy, the US, Canada and Australia. The average number of times a month that those questioned are asked to restore from tape is 26.5, and the most common reason is to access needed but non-active data (74%). Respondents from the US, the UK, Canada and Australia reported a significantly higher average number of restore requests (25 to 42 per month) compared with those in Germany, France, Poland and Italy (all single figures), which, according to the survey sponsors, is possibly due to their common law heritage which requires they surrender relevant data in legal disputes and can result in increased restores from legacy tapes. Most (73%) said they could quickly identify archive data, but a majority (55%) said they do not know the contents of tapes down to file level. When asked what prevents them understanding what data they have, the largest proportion (52%) said it is too difficult or time-consuming to read the tapes, and 38% said they do not have the infrastructure to do so.