Celcius Tape

Today, the easiest way to do that is with a tape backup drive. For SOHO, small-business and remote-office environments, a single backup drive is all that's needed, yet data backup in these environments is often neglected, getting little or no attention from corporate IT staff -- or from anyone else, for that matter. That is, until there's a crash.

You need to make sure your solution in such environments makes sense and provides a solid level of protection for your data without costing unreasonable amounts of money. Tape is the standard, reliable, non-work-intensive way to pull this off.

While small-business and SOHO requirements are somewhat different from those of larger enterprises, the data in these environments is no less valuable. Not uncommonly, the term "off-site storage" means the office manager is taking backu

If your data-backup requirements exceed 40 GB, you'll need to look at some of the higher-end technologies typically associated with autoloader systems. (For more information on automatic cartridge-loading systems, see "Buyer's Guide: Tape Autoloaders.") Autoloader devices are available in single- or multiple-drive format. One type of autoloader uses the DLT (Digital Linear Tape) technology, which was originally developed by Digital Equipment Corp. and later sold to Quantum Corp. DLT drives are currently sold by ADIC, Compaq, HP, IBM, Quantum and others. This technology offers up to 40 GB of native storage and transfer rates of 180 MB per minute in native mode. HP's SureStore DLT1i internal tape drive will cost you approximately $1,450.

Several nontraditional forms of backup -- CD-R, Zip and ORB removable media -- get a lot of press. A CD-R solution is fine for permanent storage or for creating libraries of material, but a CD-R's capacity is only 650 MB for 74-minute media and 700 MB for 80-minute media; that won't cover most enterprises' backup needs. Castlewood Systems' ORB drives offer 2.2 GB of space, but that's still probably not enough to do a full system backup. And at only 250 MB, Iomega Corp.'s Zip drive certainly isn't adequate.

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