The cost of loss data can be staggering — far greater than the cost of putting in place a robust data protection plan. In addition to costs due to downtime, legal liability is a factor for some records.

To protect yourself, tape is an important part of any data protection plan.

The Benefits of Tape

While other storage options, including disk drives, CD-ROM, and DVD, are designed for varying applications, tape drives and media are designed specifically for critical data backup. Characteristics of tape include:

• Mobility. Storing tape off-site is standard procedure. Tapes can be stored for many years and can be read or overwritten with any compatible drive.
  
  
• Affordability. Tape is very cost effective – less than 75¢ per GB* for the latest generation of Super DLTtape™ Media.
  
  
• High capacity. Relative to CD/DVD technology, tape offers more capacity on a single piece of media. Super DLTtape I can hold 220GB of compressed data on a single tape, 150 times more than a single CD and more than 20 times more than a single DVD.
  
  
• Durability. CD and DVD media are exposed to scratches and fingerprints during normal handling and loading/unloading. Super DLTtape I and DLTtape media house the media inside a plastic cartridge minimizing the threat of damage to the media.
  
  
• Reliability. 1,000,000 head passes and a 30-year archive life.

Corporate data may exist on several different storage technologies. However, tape is usually the "last line of defense" to restore data that does not exist in any other form. That's why it's important to follow best practices and choose a reliable, robust tape technology to protect your most valuable asset – your data.

*SDLT 220 drive storing 220GB compressed data on a Super DLTtape I cartridge. With the introduction in mid 2002 of the SDLT 320 the cost/GB will has dropped below 50 cents.