Data recovery emergency on a downed server... Help please!!

[Peter L. Peres]

On Wed, 31 Dec 2003, Robert Brockway wrote:

> One of the biggest problems with DDS (and other) tapes is the inability to
> restore except on the tape drive used to do that backup.  This is caused
> by head misalignment on the original drive, and makes the idea of disaster
> recovery a joke when you consider that in a real disaster the original
> drive probably went up in smoke.
>
> Anyone using tapes (particularly DDS) to backup important data[1] better
> be testing restores on a _different_ tape drive.

I do not agree fully. Incompatible tape mechanisms and backup tape horror
stories are due to the strange ideas customers have about tape mechanism
MTBFs. A tape mechanism belongs in a service center for checkup once at
most every 1000 hours of use at the latest (better 500 hours, or once a
year), assuming it runs in a low dust conditioned environment with no
smoking and no copiers/laser printers allowed near it (some of the toner
ends up as fine dust inside the surrounding machines), and with tapes
properly stored and changed (no tape will last anywhere near 500 uses).
The tests performed include compatibility testing, cleaning, and recording
quality evaluation (ber) (which may mean you may have to buy a new tape
drive if it works out low). By comparison a hard disk can rake up 20,000
hours (more than two years continuous 24/7/365) and sometimes much more
without problems.

Peter
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