Companies optimize their data protection with disk backup

The daily change of media is often omitted with current disk backup strategies.

When it comes to backup solutions, performance is what counts most, in addition to availability. It is not so much the time required for backup during operation that is decisive, but rather the time required for restoring entire systems. The volume of data in companies has grown immensely in recent years and with it the demands on storage media. While tape backups were considered the ultimate backup method for decades, their market share has shifted sharply in favor of disk backup since the beginning of the decade at the latest.

Disk backup is on the rise

The days when tape solutions were preferred over disk backup solutions are definitely over, as storage disks are becoming more powerful and cost-effective. As a result, disk backup has become a viable and affordable alternative even for smaller companies. Back in the noughties, many companies often only used disk backup as an add-on solution for cost reasons. In order to benefit from the higher transfer speed, the first step was to create a disk backup from the network. The disk backup was simply written from the disk drive to tape at a later time, without burdening the network. In the future, IT managers can save themselves this rather cumbersome procedure and perform the backup completely as a disk backup. This shows that disk backup has a completely different status today than it did ten years ago. The advantages of the disk-based backup procedure are particularly noticeable during recovery, because the restore process from the disk runs much faster than from tape. There are physical reasons for this, because random read/write access to a disk is much faster than sequential read/write access to a tape. Disk systems are easier to handle and more robust than tape drives, which wear out faster due to frequent rewinding and rewinding. Not to mention: Disk systems can backup data and process a restore at the same time. This is not possible with a tape system. Other reasons in favor of disk backup are higher usage cycles and lower disk storage requirements.

Conclusion

The advantages of disk backup solutions are obvious: shorter backup windows, significantly faster recovery and easier handling are three of several reasons that speak for disk-based data backup. The price drop in storage has eliminated the former cost advantage of tape-based backup methods. Even in smaller companies, the daily volume of data to be backed up has long since reached the terabyte range, and disk backup solutions have now proven their worth.

Further lookup: Backup, Data backup, Langmeier Backup

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