It’s a mind-blowing reality check to think that so many otherwise-responsible business owners or executives leave something as important as data protection and backups to a half-witted product (ahem, tape backups) with a fail rate higher than Bob Dole pre-Viagra. That said, here are three solid reasons your business needs to move away from tape backups:

1.       Tape Failure. Sure, anything can fail. Nowadays, manufacturers are cramming more volume into smaller drives, and as a result, tape backups are getting extremely fragile. Some reports show tape failure and replacement as often as every 3-6 months! To make matters worse, tape restoration has a staggering 71% failure rate.

2.       Speed of tape backups (or lack thereof). Due to the time tape backups require and the fact that they slow down the network, most businesses only do backups once per day, if that. This is not necessarily a matter of simply having patience either; if you have a lot of data, you may only be able to do one tape backup per day regardless.

3.       Your offsite system may not be as fail-proof as you think. When your disaster recovery plan is having Suzy Secretary take your offsite tape backups home in her purse every day, you are open to a whole slew of potential problems. What if she forgets to take the backup home? Or she takes it home, but accidentally spills her Diet Coke on it while digging for her keys? Yes, this has happened before!

Convinced, or ready for your business to move away from tape backups? Not sure what the right solution is for your data backup and disaster recovery needs? Check out The Launch Pad’s BDR offering – remote data backup and disaster recovery solutions for your business – and sign up for a free data protection assessment today!

Interested in learning more about the Launch Pad and our other comprehensive managed IT service offerings for small businesses? Email or call anytime and we’d be happy to provide you with a free technology assessment!

PS. Your kids (or employees) will have a blast stringing out your tapes like old audio cassettes!