How to effectively manage and restore the legacy tape

There is no other storage medium in the world that is as effective at archiving data than the tape.

Being able to archive data for up to 30 years is a huge benefit for any organisation. Especially for those that have to store data for legal and regulatory reasons.

But, archiving data for such a long period of time has its disadvantages. The main issue that many organisations face with tape archiving is that after 10/20/30 years of storing data, the means for accessing the data on the tapes is not always available.

Organisations go through vast amounts of changes, especially in 20 to 30 years. So, the hardware and software once needed for accessing the tapes are highly likely to have been removed. This could be due to cost cutting or new management thinking it’s no longer a necessity.

But, what happens if data archived on a tape is suddenly needed? And your company no longer has the correct tools to access it?

How to manage and restore data from legacy tapes, when you do not have the equipment anymore?

The team at Ontrack has seen many cases where companies are no longer able to access data from their legacy tapes due to lack of the necessary equipment. In these cases, the only option a company has is to contact a tape data recovery specialist.

Once a specialist has been contacted, they will analyse the tapes to see if they are readable, or if they need repairing. If the tapes can be read by the specialist’s equipment, it would then be a sensible idea for the organisation to put a bespoke tape management solution in place.

Bespoke tape management solution

Bespoke tape management solutions come in different forms, but the most popular is a permanent retainer contract. This is where a company, like Ontrack, would be on retainer to the organisation and would restore data from any legacy tapes on demand.

In our next blog, we will discuss another possible tape data recovery solution.

For more information on Ontrack’s tape management offerings, please visit https://www.ontrack.com/en-au/tape

Picture copyright: Ontrack Data Recovery