|
|
Condor Innovations Inc.
p: 604-692-2181
f: 604-689-9206
3rd Floor - 1128 Hornby St.
Vancouver, BC,
V6Z 2L4
Canada.
|
|
 |
 |
| Backup Alternatives |
Traditionally, small and medium sized companies have used tapes, CDs and external backups to protect their critical data in the event of a disaster but each of these methods has problems. Limited shelf life, high costs and a lack of encryption security are just some of the problems associated with these methods of backing up data.
Backup media such as tape, DVD, CD, Zip or floppy are also vulnerable to environmental damage e.g. heat, sunlight, humidity, liquids and dust, plus they can get scratched, bent and dropped, lost or stolen. There is also the hassle and expense of transporting tapes off-site. Back-up copies, whether on disk or tape, which are left on the premises, will not protect a company’s critical data. |
 |
|
| Tape Backups |
Many companies believe they have a reliable backup on tape; however, this is often not the case. The process is unreliable because tapes and tape drives do not always function properly and users can accidentally copy corrupted or incorrect data or overwrite good data. There is also the complex and time-consuming task of performing the tape backup.
When backups fail, companies often incur significant costs hiring an IT support person to try and restore their valuable critical data. In most cases, that money is wasted as the data cannot be recovered. A nationwide study has shown that:
- Over 34% of companies do not test their backups and of those that tested 77% found their tape backups failed to recover. (Storage Magazine)
- Nearly 50% of tape-based backup fail to restore correctly.
(Gartner Group)
- Over 50% of all recoveries fail because of errors in the backup process
Restoring your data from tapes is esentially a coin toss
- heads you get to keep your data - tails you lose your data.
Can you risk being part of the 50% that fail to recover their data? |
| CDs and DVDs |
The main causes of problems with CDs are physical damage and bad burning. CD-RW and DVD-RW (Re-Writeable) disks can become unreadable if the label side of the disk is damaged. The other cause of problems is prolonged exposure of the recorded surface to sunlight, bright light, or heat or human mishandling (scratched, bent and dropped, lost or stolen).
It is important to verify that the data has been properly copied or it may not be there when you attempt to recover it. Burned CD's and DVD's have a life span of two to five years depending on their level of quality. The amount of data that can be backed up is limited as CDs only hold up to 700 MB although DVD’s can generally hold six times that amount of data.
|
| Online Backup |
You may feel your business is secure because you are backing up your critical data over the Internet but there are a few questions you should ask yourself:
- How long will it take to download your data over the Internet if you need to recover it?
- How will you recover your data if an Internet connection is not available?
- Can you do what is necessary to recover your data if an IT person is not available?
- How quickly can your business get up and running if your premises and equipment were destroyed?
In the event of a major disaster an Internet connection will probably not be available. Restoring from tape or over the Internet can take an inordinate amount of time. A typical data recovery time over the Internet is 2.5 hours per GB. Based on this speed, it would take a company with 40GB of data 4 days to recover their data.
If Internet service was disrupted during that time, the whole process may have to start again from the beginning. |
|
|
