I recently purchased new cleaning tapes and backup media for my tape drive. When it comes to cleaning my drive and retiring old tapes, I am ultra-conservative. I clean the drive religiously; and retire my tapes at about 50% of their life cycle.
However I realize that many companies can not take that approach and must get the most out of their media. So, I started researching the topic. I found an excellent overview at www.backupassist.com/downloads/tapedriveselection.pdf. It is a highly informative article; and worth reading, despite the built in advertisements. (One of my clients uses Backup Assist on a Windows 2003 server. They are pleased with it.) However, it doesn’t tell me how many times I can expect to safely use the actual tape. To that end, I found a nifty chart at www.imation.com/support/pdfs/tape_lifecycle.pdf.
This chart is pretty self explanatory. You look up your media, check the column, ‘GB (native) Stored over life’ and divide the number found there by the number of GB you store each time you use the tape. Next divide that number by the number of times you will use that same tape in a year. The answer gives you how many years you can theoretically use that tape.
Lifecycle in years = (GB Stored Capacity/GB stored per use)
Number of uses per year
The Daily Backup is the official blog of HBS Consulting, an online backup provider.
