You may ask, is not tape an anachronism in the age of optical disks, removable hard drives and a plethora of whiz-bang, random-access storage media? In many ways it is, but because of the nature of backup it does not really matter that tape is sluggish and sequential-access. Keep in mind, tape is cheap. Companies use tape because they discover it to be a price-efficient backup answer.

Nevertheless, if you have any issues with tape backup, you’ll most likely be interested to know that there are several options to tape.

Backup to NAS gadgets

NAS (Network Attached Storage) gadgets are attached directly to your network and can act as a backup shop. Clearly, it’s very convenient to backup files to NAS, as there are no disks or tapes to insert and remove. There are many NAS gadgets specially created for little businesses. NAS is an excellent choice for network backup.

Backup to REV generate

In April 2004, Iomega released the REV generate — a new storage device that has greater capability than tape and is 5 to 8 occasions quicker. Key features are:

* Backup to REV generate is much quicker than tape backup.
* REV generate models are more tough than tape.
* Whilst tape requires regular cleaning, no cleaning is needed for REV generate models.
* Backup to REV generate may in reality prove more price-efficient for your company than tape, based on your backup scheme and other factors.

Otherwise, REV backup is very similar to tape backup in principle.

Final notes

A number of reliable backup software program options exist. Choosing 1 is simply a situation of deciding which is most suitable for your company. As usually, make investments in high quality backup software. Instead than buying specialist REV backup software program and NAS backup software program, your choice in software program should permit backup to several gadgets. You will then be in a position to alter your backup hardware in the future with out buying new software program.

Linus Chang is a backup expert and the lead developer of BackupAssist — backup software program that is simple and affordable, and ideal for little and medium businesses. Safeguard your Windows servers, such as SQL Server and Exchange Server, to tape, REV drive, hard drive, NAS and more, at a fraction of the cost of other backup programs. It transforms NTBackup into a script-free and simple-to-use tool.