Computer Backup and Tape Drives
A Backup Article Contributed by Ashley Lister
Computer Backup and Tape Drives
One of the most common methods of computer backup is using a tape drive. Since the very early days of computer technology, and especially during the days of the huge mainframe computers that were popular for business in the 1970s, tape drives and magnetic tapes have been the medium of choice for computer backups.
Tapes Drives are One of the Most Reliable Methods of Creating a Computer Backup.
In layman's terms, a tape drive is very much like a more conventional tape recorder used for recording and playing music or other audio material; or a video recorder, used for recording footage. However, rather than recording or playing music, audio or video information, computer data can be read from the tape drive, and it can also be written to it.
Tape drives have capacities that can vary from a few kilobytes up to several gigabytes. This great variety of range means that, if the method of using a tape drive most suits your needs, there is a bound to be a storage solution that suits your exact requirements.
The transfer speeds of tape drives varies as greatly as the range of data they can store. The faster tape drives can store up to twenty megabytes per second. This is a very fast data transfer ratio.
Tape Drives are Regarded As the Cheapest Form of Data Storage for Computer Backups.
Magnetic tape consists of a coating on a thin strip of plastic. This coating can be magnetized and demagnetized by the tape drive to store information. The tape drive uses incredibly small electromagnets to magnetize and demagnetize the strip in blocks that match a binary coding that the computer will ultimately understand. The same principle of magnetic coating is used regardless of whether the media being stored is video footage, audio recordings, or data information for a computer backup.
In computer backup mediums it can come in a variety of forms from QIC tapes, DAT tapes and SDLT tapes. The types of tape are specific to manufacturers and suppliers but the principles underlying the tape and how it is recorded are all identical.
Tape Drives are Ideal for Computer Backup.
Because of their low cost, and because they can be used again and again with an almost limitless lifespan, tape drives are seen as the ideal medium for performing computer backups.
The main disadvantage of tape drives is that they are sequential access devices. This means that the information they store can only be accessed in the order in which it was originally written to the tape. If a computer user wants to access a particular block of information, every preceding block will need to be read first. While this makes tape drives too slow for general purpose use, it means that they are ideal for using in backup situations.
If you do decide to use tape drives for your computer backup, you will be falling back on one of the computer industry's most tried and tested methods of data storage.
