Companies Are Once Again Storing Data On Tape, Just in Case (marketwatch.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: To stay up to date in the battle against hackers, some companies are turning to a 1950s technology. Storing data on tape seems impossibly inconvenient in an age of easy-access cloud computing. But that is the big security advantage of this vintage technology, since hackers have no way to get at the information. The federal government, financial-services firms, health insurers and other regulated industries still keep tape as a backup to digital records. Now a range of other companies are returning to tape as hackers get smarter about penetrating defenses -- and do much more damage when they do get in. Rob Pritchard, founder of the Cyber Security Expert consulting firm and associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute think tank, has noticed the steady resurgence of tape as part of best-practice backup strategies. "Companies of all sizes must be able to restore data quickly if needed," he says, "but also have a robust, slower-time, recovery mechanism should the worst happen." Mr. Pritchard, who works with a range of organizations to improve corporate cybersecurity practices, says: "A good backup strategy will have multiple layers. Cloud and online services have their place, but can be compromised."

Comments

Tape?

[DontBeAMoran]

Apart from what I assume is a lower cost, is there any reason to use tape instead of just doing a rotation of RAID systems and disconnecting the unused ones?

Re:Tape?

[redmid17]

Reliability, portability, and length of time the data can be stored, possibly speed. LTO-4 and lower is definitely going to be slower. LTO-5+ might be faster for writing depending on the RAID setup.

Pretty much the reasons you would use tape in the first place.

Re:Tape?

[houstonbofh]

Hard drives do not like to sit powered off. In 3 to 5 years the fail rate is significant. Tape is fine for that. I have restored 40 year old tapes.

Re:Tape?

[arth1]

By design, tapes are sequential append, not random write. That makes it much harder to modify data. For tape stations that can be set to not allow programmatic rewinding, but tapes have to be physically cleared for rewind, it's even more of a security benefit this way.

Much like some of us like having important system logs go to an unbuffered dot matrix printer in dumb mode - there's no way to undo what's already written like a local log, no way to DoS logging to a remote syslog server, nor kill the print job while it's buffering, like a modern page based printer.

Re:Tape?

[Anne Thwacks]

Here's a secret about tape; you drop it, it's as fragile as a HDD.

NO, its not. If you drop it, the puck (the bit that the loading mechanism uses to pick the end of the tape) may fall out of its retaining slots. It can be put back in place if you are moderately careful. If the plastic case is not broken, the tape is probably readable.

I have dropped a fair number of tapes from desk height over the years (have been using them since the 1970's and designed both hardware and software for tape drives). None has failed as a result. I have also dropped a few H/Ds as well - some were damaged by falls of a few inches (they are actually more robust if operating). I have restored many tapes after 30 years. You will have a hard time finding an ST506 interface that connects to a modern computer.

I also seem to have significant problems with bit-rot on both Windows and Linux. This is noticeable as jpgs which have problems after sitting idle on the disk for a year or two, and occasionally docs and odts that won't read. Less of a problem with SCSI disks AFAICT, so I suspect hardware, but I did use DOS 4.0, so, I am not sure its not software.

I have definitely had brand new server grade HDs fail to start after 3 years on the shelf. I doubt used ones are more reliable.

Re:Tape?

[lgw]

Live mirroring is a way to make a backup, but isn't a backup until you break the mirror. Most RAID systems aren't really good at moving that sort of stuff around on the fly, unless you're talking about legacy "big box" storage systems that charge 10x-100x what the drives cost.

But, yeah, there are 3 distinct scenarios:
* Backup
* Disaster recovery
* Archiving

Tape is far and away the best for archiving, and is the easiest/cheapest way to do DR. It's not all that good for simple backup - snapshotting of some sort (even if the backup is in the same rack or even device as the main storage) wins for backup, since most restore requests are for recovery from user error, not hardware failure.

It makes good sense to optimize backup for fast recovery from accidental file deletion and the like, as long as you also have a DR strategy that will help you if you lose a rack full of storage (or datacenter etc).

Archiving is usually the legal compliance angle, not the other two use cases. Plenty of big companies have fancy cross-site DR strategies, but still archive to tape for compliance with "store your records for N years" compliance. Heck, the same truck from Iron Mountain likely takes both their paper records and tapes.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Medium longevity

[DrYak]

is there any reason to use tape instead of just doing a rotation of RAID systems and disconnecting the unused ones?

The main reason IS the one you mentioned (with tape, you basically disconnect only the medium, the magnetic tape. Not the whole read/write drive or even whole RAID cabinet. So you only need to pay for magnetic media as you expand capacity, not full blown electronics. A single tape drive and robot can last you quite some time).

But there is also some other practical consideration :

- Tape has been around for a lot of time. It has been already quite studied regarding its longevity. Its various failure modes are all well known (ghosting).
Manufacturer are now pretty much sure they can guarantee you that you can store a tape cartridge in fridge for Yyy years and it will still be 100% readable afterward.

- Hardisk are a bit more recent technology. We don't have quite the same guarantee regarding mechanical failures, bitrot, etc.
Since the whole purpose of this approach is to disconnect completely the storage, it means that the back-up disk will need to be reconnected and re-spun back to 7200RPMS at some point in the future. A small number out of all disk will fail and will not spin, due to various mechanical feature. A small number of the spinning disks will have suffered bitrot and will have corrupted.
Companies don't have the half-century long experience to make exact guarantee for Zzz years.

It's nothing horrible that can't be compensated with correct duplication and erasure coding. But it's still a bit less guaranteed.

ECC

[DrYak]

At thousands times more data the density would need to be high enough that cosmic radiation should start affecting tape also?

Nearly every modern serious data storage (even some high-range SD flash cards: see Transcend) uses some form of error correction.
Neither tape nor harddisks (nor SD cards with ECC) are that much affected by single bit flips induced by cosmic radiation.

But HDD can still be affected by mechanical failures.
While on the other hand, "mechanical failure" is hardly a risk for a medium that is just basically just a long band of magnetic tape.

Also, the bitrot of tape is better known because it has been studied for a longer time.

Not to mention that modern tapes still has a lower density than modern harddisks (with all their "super-paramagnetic" and "shingled" tricks).
An LTO-7 tape is shy of 1km of lenght for 12mm width (they have exactly 11 square meters to store their native uncompressed raw 6.0 TB)
A Seagate drive of similar capacity crams its data on 6 platters (of 9cm diameter each - that's 0.076 square meters)