February 2007 — News
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Data Protection: Make a Wise Decision
Fixed disk is another potential option. It is familiar, high-speed, and not complex. But backup to another fixed disk is perilous. One fundamental challenge for hard disk technology is to prove its ability to provide cost effective offsite security, something of a hardship for a fixed-disk technology. As well, disk drives are less scalable: What is to be done when the capacity limit is hit? The alternative is to daisy chain one disk to another, which drags performance fiercely. Unlike tape and removable disk, fixed-disk technologies are not as portable as the alternatives and have to be handled carefully due to the drive mechanics being transported with the media. They are not built to be moved.
Schools need more than just one backup: It's best to set up a schedule using a regular rotation system. Don't just overwrite the backup with the next backup. Any kind of glitch or error in writing the new backup can leave no backup at all. Ideally, three removable cartridges should be put in rotation to ensure proper protection. One cartridge should be kept in the dock so that a backup can be performed at any time; a second cartridge containing a recent backup in the event of an emergency restore; and a third backup cartridge should be kept offsite.
Removable disk storage
Removable storage is not a new concept in the computer industry. Since the early 1980s, the industry has seen the standard floppy disk drive with the removable 3.5-inch diskettes. As computers and technologies have advanced over the years, removable storage technology has moved right along as well. Storage vendors can now offer reliable, cost-effective removable disk with capacities reaching from 40 GB to 160 GB.
Removable disks allow users to enjoy the economics of low cost, rugged media and the ability to preserve backup data away from the primary storage in a most simplistic and traditional backup process.
The most pervasive (available from several leading storage vendors) "disk to removable disk" storage line is based on ProStor Systems' (Boulder, CO) RDX technology. RDX technology is a 2.5-inch removable Serial ATA (SATA) hard drive that looks and acts like a tape cartridge, but performs with the speed and reliability of fixed disk. The media is remarkably robust, with a service life of 10 years and the ability to sustain a 3-foot drop onto concrete. The cartridge itself will alert the user that there is a problem either with the backup or the media so that when data recovery is performed, there are no surprises.
ProStor will refresh its cartridge capacities and speeds as new mobile hard drives are released from suppliers. (The company's technology reportedly works with any manufacturer's SATA drives.) RDX technology allows SMBs to upgrade to higher-capacity cartridges without having to buy new drives, preserving their technology investment and not requiring any forward migration of data.
As a random access medium, recovery from an RDX backup takes milliseconds, in contrast to a much longer serial search on a tape cartridge. File retrieval is in seconds rather than hours. It can be argued that ProStor Systems' RDX technology takes every positive aspect of both tape and disk and combines them into one versatile product. At the same time, RDX sheds the negative characteristics of each medium.
