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Comment Re:maybe not... (Score 1) 284

Smaller companies are opting out of tape because of the perceived high cost of an automated tape library.
And you are right about less tapes being used, but you are seeing more intelligent backup software that does does perpetual incrementals and de-dupe, keeping the cost of media down.Short-term backups are also being kept on disk (e.g. less than 30 days) and the longer term ones to tape. This means the likelyhood of restore comes from the faster disk.

Comment Re:Can we get a tape drive to back this up? (Score 1) 316

Sounds like something I used to see in the 90s.

Tape libraries are very low maintenance and they usually have a cleaning cart slot that auto cleans the drive when it needs to
(which isn't very often on modern tape drives)

For a small company (that cant copy the data to another site) then the only manual job is the import/export of the carts and the occasional cleaning cart replacement.

Comment Re:Everything old is new again. (Score 1) 193

.. until you want to restore data from a bunch of magnetic reel tapes.
You need to find a really old tape drive (like a 3420). Then you need to find someone who knows how to operate and read from the media.

I've seen something like this a number of years ago. They even stored a tape drive in the cupboard with the reels.
They couldn't find anyone who could get it operational. Even when they contacted people, who were in retirement, they said it needed an obsolete system to read data. It ended up being shipped abroad to get the data off them, likely with a significant cost.

Comment Re:Everything old is new again. (Score 1) 193

Enterprises don't generally vault that sort of data for XX years.
They would normally migrate it to an incrementally newer media after a technology refresh.

Any media that's not migrated usually gets destroyed or abandoned (locked away and forgotten) after the appropriate legal limitation period is passed.

We used to see badly run departments scramble to try restore unmanaged/archaic backup media, but is now very uncommon due to requirements
governing data retention and management.
Plus a library of a thousand old tapes could fit in a handful of latest generation media.

Comment move along, its just the stazi (Score 1) 169

I work at a large IT company and there is so much fragmentation and inconsistent security policies that seem to come from knee-jerk decisions by middle managers that have been chewed up because of specific security exposures.

This ends up being difficult for an end user as you end up jumping through extra loops for a service that less important that the one you normally use.

Security personnel, don't listen to reason, they just perform their goosestep and salute to the leader.
If I find a loophole to make my life easier I will use it.

Companies need to realize security needs to be thought out and need to be integrated properly, not a strap on what I see used by large companies.

 

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