When your single set of backup tapes are your only copy of the data. Ensuring you have another copy of the data is key consideration in any disaster recovery scenario. Duplicating the backup tapes was the most simple and efficient solution.

Magstar 3570 data cartridges were popular on IBM systems during the 1990s as high performance near-line storage. As the decade ended and Ultrium became the dominant force in tape storage there was a move away from 3570 and similar backup tape. One Altirium customer having survived the pain of migrating all of their tape hardware over to LTO Ultrium, and having retired the last of their Magstar drives were more than a bit surprised to discover that there were still 100 3570 tapes sitting in the archive and with a retention requirement of 30 years.

When faced with a disaster such as a fire or flood, the last thing you need is more complications in restoring your vaulable data. In this particular instance Altirium received a tape that had survived a building fire but unfortunately problems with the backup prevented the data from being restored.

Backing up and managing the large amounts of data stored on mid-range and mainframe computers are ususally managed by rigid policy driven applications. When an incorrect date in a policy caused a set of tapes expire from the systems there was no way back. Altirium data recovery skills were required recover the lost data.

Hard disks are electro-mechanical precision devices that do not take kindly to being immersed in water. If the water in question is from an overflowing river then the contaminants within the water make the situation even worse.

After 3 days under water you might think that all would be lost.