The city government of a small town did not use a Remote Backup System. Instead
they were carefully backing up their computer system onto the tape cartridges that
came with the system.
When the system crashed and they needed the data, they found that the tapes were
all blank even thought each day the software displayed the message "BACKUP COMPLETE".
They had never tried to restore the data before.
They had never thought to verify the tapes.
All data had to be re-entered from paper, which took several weeks.
A realtor attempted a do-it-yourself computer upgrade from a 286 to a 486. His budget
motherboard came with poor advice, and as a result his hard drive crashed and all data
was lost; accounting data, real estate closing information, and agent commission calculations for
his three offices.
Luckily he was a client of an R.B.S. Provider.
After he installed a new hard drive and controller card, the R.B.S. provider was able to restore
all the data from the remote backup, and
in about 2 hours everything was restored to the date of the last backup transmission.
Dutifully, this woman made sure her tape backup software was running every night before
she left the office. As soon as it started, she locked the doors and didn't think about it
again until the next work day. Sounds great, except it was the same tape over and over again.
When the terrible day came to retrieve a database that had hundreds of client files on it,
the tape had broken from too much usage.
Don't expect your tapes to last a lifetime, rotate them and replace them on a regular basis.
Several years ago when a customer of a computer company called, saying that her system was down
the computer company ran to help. Knowing that
they had installed a tape drive, purchased extra tapes, labeled the tapes, and even purchased a small fire-proof
box for her to store them in, they felt sure that they had covered all the bases.
Sure enough within just a few hours of getting a new system installed and then installing her old tape
drive, she was up and running. One thing the computer company did learn however, tape drive manufacturers (like
printer manufacturers) update their hardware and the tapes could not be used in a newer model tape drive.
She now does her tapes, but will always use the Remote Backup Service as well.
The president of a mid-sized company found that relying on employees to change the daily
backup wasn't working, and with the quote "If you want something done right, do it yourself" in his
mind, that's exactly what he intended to do.
Every day he made sure that the correct tape was inserted into the tape backup, he had them very well
organized and stored at the company's safety-deposit box. Every day during lunch he put the previous days'
tape and the day's bank deposit into his briefcase, made the deposit himself (another thing he wanted to do
personally), and rotated the tapes in the deposit box.
When the inevitable happened, he very proudly went to his deposit box and removed the tapes he needed to
restore. They were all blank. It took a few hours to figure out what had happened. To his horror, a
magnetized business card which he had clipped to the top inside of his briefcase was erasing the tapes
as soon as he closed the case. He still takes those daily trips to the bank, without the magnet, but is
also a Remote Backup customer.