In the past, people were periodically sent out into massive warehouses to count inventory and verify their company's assets. Now, more often than not, a company's assets are expressed in a complex sequence of 0s and 1s. All that endless data -- even if you handle physical merchandise -- is itself one of your company's most valuable assets, and you must make sure those assets are protected. .
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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.
Size Matters.
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 backup tapes home at night. Small companies and SOHO environments can turn to a variety of small, inexpensive tape backup drives to fill their needs; some companies, such as Hewlett-Packard Co. and Tecmar, offer drives that suit the needs of these environments perfectly. .
Among the first things you must consider when selecting a tape backup drive is size. How much data will you put on the drive? You'll want to avoid having to change tapes; if manual intervention is required to change a tape, your chances of finishing backups on a regular basis decrease. For one thing, it's human nature to forget or ignore a daily repetitive task. Second, tape backups are commonly performed at night, during periods of low end-user activity, so it's likely that no one will be around to change a tape if the need arises.