Tape Backup vs Disk Backup

Regardless of the backup software you use, we as an IT Support company are always asked which is best, Tape based backup, or Disk backup. This blog is designed to help you decide which solution is for you:

Description	Tape Backup	Disk Backup
Convenience	Tapes are small and compact. They can be easily taken off-site in a bag perhaps.	External disks such as USB disks are getting smaller, but generally they are larger and weigh more than tapes.
Cost effective	On a direct comparison to Disks, Tape drives and accompanying I/O cards i.e. SCSI / SAS cards are expensive. However once purchased the backup tapes are very cheap to buy.	Individually hard disks are very cost effective. You can get 1TB data for around £150 to £200 at the moment.
Disaster Recovery	When things go wrong, all you want is to get your system back, and as quickly as possible! Tapes offer fast and reliable disaster recovery. In addition, if there’s a problem with last nights backup, or even the night before, you can go back to the previous nights backup without a problem.	You can perform a disaster recovery from disk just as well as what you can from tape. It is best practice to have more than one (in-line) backup just in case there is a problem with the backup. This then comes down to cost effectiveness.
Durability	Tapes are very durable and will survive most environments and conditions. They are also forgiving of impact should you drop them.	Hard disks are more sensitive than tapes, if you drop them chances are they drive will be damaged.
Ease of operation	Once setup tapes are very easy to use. Backup systems can automatically eject after successful backup, and then it’s a matter of simply inserting the next tape.	We recommend removing the disk by clicking ‘Safely Remove Hardware’ in Windows to prevent data corruption. For this reason, tapes are easier.
Fast Backup	Ultrium 4 can achieve 80MBps	USB2 can achieve 40MBps
Fast Restore	Again Ultrium 4 can achieve 80MBps, although tapes will need to be catalogued in a Disaster Recovery scenario before the restore process can begin. Small restore jobs are therefore slower than disk, large restores can be considerably faster.	For small restores disks are considerably faster as they are ready to go. There is no cataloguing, or finding the right place on the tape.
Online (Accessible) Data	You need to insert the correct tape, the tape need to rewind and find the data you are looking for, then you may restore.	If the drive is connected, you can restore immediately.
Historical data	The low price of backup tapes makes the purchase of daily, weekly, monthly and even year end tapes very affordable. Historical data therefore is easily achievable with tape backup.	For historical backups you will need a number of disk drives. Ideally for monthly backups you would have 12 drives, one for each month, or 6 drives with 2 backups, or 3 drives with 4 monthly backups. This though can be confusing!

Popular backup software includes:

Symantec Backup Exec
Symantec System Recovery (Disk Based Backup Only)
CA ARCserve Backup

Eitex offer a managed Backup and Disaster Recovery Service. For more details please complete our Enquiry Form.