Tape backup is not dead. In fact, more tape is sold today than ever before. This might come as a shock to those who’ve been told tape is obsolete technology that’s been replaced by fancy disk-based systems and cloud storage.
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/)
The Biggest Myth About Tape Backup
Let’s start by killing the biggest myth about tape backup: that it died because it was “too slow.” This is completely backward. Tape’s biggest problem was actually that it was TOO FAST, not too slow.
Here’s what I mean: Tape drives have two speeds – stop and very fast. They require data to flow at high speeds to function properly. When you don’t feed a tape drive enough data, it has to start and stop constantly (what we call “shoe-shining”), which makes the drive appear slow and unreliable.
The real issue was a fundamental mismatch between tape technology and modern backup methods. As we moved to incremental forever backups, the slow trickle of data didn’t match tape’s need for speed. Companies that treated tape like it was slow by adding more drives actually made their tape systems slower – a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Who’s Using Tape Backup Today?
If tape isn’t widely used for operational backups anymore, who’s buying all this tape? The answer might surprise you: hyperscalers like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and IBM.
That’s right – the cloud giants are the biggest consumers of tape technology today. When you store data in services like Amazon’s Glacier Deep Archive, there’s a good chance your data is sitting on tape somewhere. The retrieval times (hours, not seconds) and pricing models all align perfectly with tape’s characteristics.
4 Reasons Tape Backup Still Matters
1. Unbeatable Cost Economics
Let’s be blunt: Nothing comes close to tape on cost. When we talk about fully-burdened cost (including hardware, media, power, cooling, and management), tape is one to two orders of magnitude cheaper than any alternative.
Even if disks were free, tape would still be cheaper because of power and cooling savings. This makes tape not just cost-effective but also greener.
2. Superior Speed for Bulk Data
Contrary to popular belief, tape is actually faster than disk from a pure data transfer perspective. If you need to move massive amounts of data from point A to point B, tape remains unbeatable.
As the saying goes, “never underestimate the bandwidth of a truck full of tapes.” The latency might be high, but the throughput is practically unlimited.
3. Better Data Integrity
Here’s something few people realize: Tape is substantially better at writing and preserving data than disk. The bit error rate (how often errors occur when writing data) on tape is 10,000 times better than the best disk systems.
Tape also suffers less from bit rot over time because it has larger magnetic grains and is stored at ambient temperatures, not constantly running hot like disk systems.
4. Ransomware Protection Through Air-Gapping
The number one reason for disaster recoveries today is ransomware, and tape provides a genuinely immutable, air-gapped backup option. You can’t hack what isn’t connected to a network.
Tape can be physically secured, stored off-site, and made truly write-once. This makes it incredibly valuable as that last line of defense against cyber threats.
How Tape Backup Fits in Modern Systems
While tape has largely moved out of operational recovery, it still has a valuable place in disaster recovery strategies. Many organizations use disk-based systems for their primary backups but create secondary copies on tape for long-term retention and off-site protection.
When designed correctly, this hybrid approach offers the best of both worlds: fast operational recovery from disk and secure, cost-effective disaster recovery capability from tape.
The Future of Tape Backup
As data volumes continue to explode with AI, genomics, scientific computing, and IoT, the demand for cost-effective long-term storage will only increase. Tape technology continues to advance with each new LTO generation, offering more capacity and better performance.
For organizations dealing with massive data sets that need to be kept for years or decades, tape backup remains not just relevant but essential. The hyperscalers have figured this out – perhaps it’s time more organizations reconsidered tape’s place in their storage hierarchy.
Tape backup isn’t dead – it’s just moved up to the archives where it belongs and where it continues to excel at what it does best: affordable, secure, long-term data protection.
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
