Tape backup for small business might sound like something from the past, but a recent announcement from Mag Store could change that perception. They’ve released what appears to be the industry’s first Thunderbolt/USB4 desktop tape drive, potentially opening up LTO tape technology to a much wider market of small and medium businesses.
This blog post summarizes the main points of my latest podcast episode. If you’d like, you can listen to it or watch it at https://www.backupwrapup.com/)
Who Needs Tape Backup for Small Business in 2025?
Let’s be real – not every small business needs tape backup. Many SMBs and what I call TSBs (Truly Small Businesses) have most of their data in the cloud already. But there are specific types of companies where tape backup for small business makes a lot of sense:
- Businesses generating large amounts of data on-premises
- Companies with poor internet connectivity but significant backup needs
- Organizations particularly concerned about ransomware
- Content creators (like YouTube influencers) generating terabytes of video footage
That last example really hits home. Remember the “Life Uncontained” folks who lost weeks of raw video when their hard drive died? A tape backup solution would have saved them a massive headache.
The Real Cost of Tape Backup for Small Business
Here’s the elephant in the room – Mag Store’s new Thunderbolt tape drive costs around $6,000. That’s definitely not pocket change for most small businesses. But here’s where the math gets interesting.
An LTO-9 tape cartridge costs about $90 and holds 18TB native (or 45TB compressed). So your first 45TB costs $6,000. But your second 45TB? Just $90. And your third? Another $90.
Compare that to buying multiple disk arrays at similar capacities, especially if you’re following the 3-2-1 backup rule (3 copies, 2 different media types, 1 copy offsite). The cost advantage of tape grows with every copy you make.
Advantages of Tape Backup for Small Business
Besides the cost efficiency for multiple copies, tape offers several other benefits:
- True ransomware protection: When that tape is offline, it’s truly offline. No hacker can touch it.
- Superior data integrity: As I always say, “Tape is better at writing ones and zeros than disk is.” The bit error rate for LTO is one or two orders of magnitude better than disk media.
- Long-term reliability: Disks reliably hold data for about 5 years. Tapes can reliably store data for decades.
- Physical transportability: Nothing beats the bandwidth of a FedEx truck. For businesses shipping large amounts of data, physical tape transport remains incredibly efficient.
The Challenges of Tape Backup for Small Business
It’s not all roses. Using tape effectively requires some technical knowledge. You need to understand concepts like streaming tape drives and probably invest in disk staging to avoid the “shoe-shining” effect of stopping and starting tape drives.
Software is another consideration. Mag Store resells Retrospect for $169, which provides Windows and Mac backup software that works with their drives. They also offer more expensive archiving software called ArchAware.
For tech-savvy businesses, there are also free and open-source solutions available, though they’ll require more setup and configuration knowledge.
Should You Invest in Tape Backup for Small Business?
The answer depends on your specific situation. If you:
- Generate multiple terabytes of data
- Need multiple copies for redundancy
- Are concerned about ransomware
- Want long-term archives
- Have someone technically capable of managing the system
…then the $6,000 investment might make a lot of sense, especially compared to ongoing cloud storage costs or multiple disk arrays.
For smaller businesses or those with minimal on-premises data, sticking with cloud backup probably makes more sense. As I mentioned in the podcast, I don’t even use tape for my own small business data, because my volume doesn’t justify the investment.
Remember that the beauty of tape backup for small business isn’t the first copy – it’s the second, third, and fourth copies that make the economics work in your favor. At $90 per 45TB, it’s hard to beat that price for true offline, ransomware-proof storage.
The addition of Thunderbolt compatibility makes this technology accessible to a whole new segment of the market who previously couldn’t connect traditional fiber channel tape drives to their systems. For the right business, this could be a game-changer in their data protection strategy.
Written by W. Curtis Preston (@wcpreston), four-time O'Reilly author, and host of The Backup Wrap-up podcast. I am now the Technology Evangelist at S2|DATA, which helps companies manage their legacy data
