Tape Drives

by: jameswalsh
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Over the years, a plethora of storage media have inundated the markets, which offer high capacity and portability. But tape drives, though not a very recent invention, have convincingly proven their importance as a highly reliable storage media being used by most of the big and small businesses.

Despite the ongoing predictions being made regarding the demise of magnetic tape technology, it still continues to enjoy the trust and confidence of many institutional users the world over. Tape automation is today estimated to be a $ 2.03 billion business. In the times to come, the market for tape drives is expected to show an impressive growth of 11 percent. Magnetic tapes satisfy almost all the major criteria expected of a reliable storage device.

Advantages of Using Tape Drives

1) Cost Effective

In case of tape drives, data is stored magnetically in sequential sectors along the entire length of the tape. Thus magnetic tapes provide the lowest cost per gigabyte of storage. Being so cost effective, tape drives comfortably fit into the budgetary allocations of most of the big and small enterprises.

2) Flexibility

One major advantage of using tape drives is that the number of tapes can be increased or decreased, depending upon the amount of data to be saved and as per the requirements of the user.

3) High Storage Capacity

Magnetic tapes offer a very high storage capacity that is sufficient to store and backup the tons of data generated by big corporate houses.

4) Variety

Tape drives offer a wide range of formats so as to enable the end users to choose amongst a series of options to save and backup their critical data.

5) Portable

Being handy and portable, tapes can conveniently be shipped to offsite locations for storage and archival purposes.

6) Proven Media

Tape drives have proven to be reliable and dependable over the years. Business world exhibits an avid predilection for this media owing to its superb track record, performance and history.

7) Recyclable

Magnetic tapes perhaps happen to be the only storage media that can be degaussed and recycled for further use. By recycling their used tape media, corporate houses can cut down their storage and backup expenses by approximately 30 percent.

8) Long Shelf life

Magnetic tapes have an average shelf life of approximately 30 years. Though this may seem to be very limited as compared to the average life span of more recent media such as USB flash drives, still it is sufficient to meet the backup requirements of most of the institutional users.

9) Automated

The entire backup process can be automated by using an automatic tape library that consists of one or more tape drives and a number of tape slots. The tapes are swapped with the help of a robotic arm as per the directions of a main computer. Ultimately this leads to the saving of precious time and effort.

10) Easy to Set up

It does not take any special knowledge or expertise to set up a data storage and backup facility using a tape drive. The entire backup process can be automated to economize on time and effort.

Demerits of Tape Drives

1) Affordability

It may sometimes get very costly to setup a tape driven storage facility, considering the exorbitant hardware and media expenses involved. Also tapes and tape drives frequently become obsolete and outdated and require regular replacements.

2) Data Security

Most of the tape drives do not have the provision to encrypt data and are not password protected. This
may often lead to the compromise of vital and mission critical data.

3) Convenience

Often it gets very cumbersome to manually administer a tape driven backup facility. Most of the times, it requires the help and assistance of skilled technicians and may prove to be very costly.

4) Storage Capacity

Many a times the tape capacity quoted by the manufacturers is significantly exaggerated.

5) Data Access

Tape drives do not allow for a random access to data and often it gets very difficult to access the data saved on a tape.

6) Full System Backup

Though it is technically possible to backup an entire system using a tape drive, yet the recovery process often proves to be complicated and time intensive and may fail to restore a system in case of a data disaster.

7) Data loss from Magnetic Tapes

Tape drives are failure prone and vulnerable to damage due to poor storage, over use, mishandling and exposure to electromagnetic fields. They may get stuck, worn out or broken resulting in data loss.

About the Author

James Walsh is a freelance writer and copy editor. If you are concerned about data loss and would like more information on Data Recovery see http://www.fields-data-recovery.co.uk

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