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Is an external hard drive on a small business server a sufficient backup device as oppose to a tape backup?

Public Comments

1. The external offers no protection as far as encryption, and it will be much much slower. It probably wont have enough space either.
2. Tape drives can be unreliable. Actually, the tapes have a high failure rate. An external hard drive is probably the safest archival option right now. I found a hard drive from 1999 and it still worked. and it was rolling around inside my desk for 8 years.
3. If you get a proper external drive, then yes, it can be a sufficient backup device. I recommend Western Digital's My Book 1TB (1000GB) Edition. It features RAID, and a triple interface (USB, FireWire 400, and FireWire 800).
4. 1. A virus, hacker, other illicit act or even a power surge can easily destroy an external hard drive just as it would a native hard drive. 2. Tape backups have a longer storage life than hard drives and, in some studies, have shown a better record of maintaining data integrity. 3. If something mechanically goes wrong with the drive (bad sectors, head misalignment) it will destroy the platter and its data, leaving you with a costly recovery. Tapes are not prone to this problem.
5. I f i had to choose one or the other it would be the HDD