Advantages of Tape Backup Drives Although tape backup drives are no longer the one-size-fits-all panacea for all types of bigger-than-floppy storage problems, they have their place in keeping your data safe. Following are several good reasons for using tape backup drives:

• Tape backups are a true one-cartridge backup process for individual client PCs, standalone computers, or network servers when high-capacity tape drives and cartridges are used. Anytime multiple tapes or disks must be used to make a backup, the chances of backup failure increase.

• If you or your company has made previous backup tapes, you must keep a tape drive to access that data or perform a restore from it. Tape backup drives are necessary if you need to restore from previously made backup tapes.

• If you want an easy media rotation method for preserving multiple full-system backups, tape backup drives are a good choice. In general, tape drives are used where high capacity and high reliability are paramount. They can be expensive initially but are extremely inexpensive when you factor in the low cost of the media over time.

Disadvantages of Tape Backup Drives

Many computer users who once used tape backups for data backup purposes have turned to other technologies for the following reasons:

• Creating a tape backup copy of files or of a drive requires the use of a special backup program in almost all cases. A few tape drives allow drive letter access to at least part of the tape capacity, but this feature is far from universal, and a special driver program must be used.

• Retrieving data from most tape backup drives requires that the data files be restored to the hard disk. Other types of backup storage can be treated as a drive letter for direct use from the media.

• Tape backups store and retrieve data sequentially. The last file backed up can't be accessed until the rest of the tape is read; other types of backup storage use random access, which enables any file on the device to be located and used in mere seconds.

• Low-cost tape backups usingQIC (Quarter Inch Committee), QIC-Wide, or Travan technology once had little problem keeping up with increases in hard disk capacity and once sold for prices comparable to or less than the hard disks they protected. Today's hard disks have capacities up to 500GB or larger and are far less expensive than most comparably sized tape backups. As a result, more expensive, higher-capacity tape drives are needed to achieve single-cartridge backups. Otherwise, you must load multiple tapes manually or use an autoloader.

• Newer backup and restore techniques, such as drive imaging/ghosting, rival the ease of use of tape backups and permit data restoration with lower-cost optical storage devices such as rewritable DVD drives. These alternatives are particularly useful if only a few GB of data need to be backed up on a continuing basis.

For these reasons, the once-unassailable position of a tape backup drive as being the must-have data protection accessory is no longer a secure one; plenty of rivals to tape backups are on the market. However, if you can afford a high-quality DDS, DAT 72, or AIT tape drive, you can get a high-performance and high-reliability solution because these same drives are used in the demanding roles of network backup.