I’m going to go ahead and declare these things dead.
While I haven’t signed the contract yet, and I can’t vouch first hand for the service, the online backup service Mozy wins over tape in every dimension imaginable.
Helping out my dad’s company take over some IT related tasks today and this seems like such a no-brainer in 2007. MozyPro supports encryption, Exchange Server, SQL Server, open and locked files, automatic/continuous block level incremental backups!
MozyPro (the business version), as of this post, costs $3.95 per server and $.50 per GB/month. Doing the math on what it costs someone to physically get to the computer room, rotate the tapes, take them to a safe location and deal with this and it becomes instantly clear which solution is cheaper.
If I didn’t already have a FolderShare based setup at home, I’d be using the personal version there. And Scott Hanselman uses it, so you know it has to be good.
In other storage news, I’d already own one of these “storage robots” called Drobo if I had the extra cash. I’ve been dealing and struggling with internal, external, hardware RAID, software RAID, systems for so long that having a box that was so automatic would be like waking from a 15 year-long nightmare. Check out the demo video they have on the site, if you’ve ever dealt with this stuff before — it will rock your world.
Set your own life time more easy take the home loans and everything you require.