On Fri, 31 May 2013, Sean Dennis wrote to mark lewis:

 ml> i got paid to do it, too... for those clients that hired my 
 ml> company for that service because they didn't want to do it 
 ml> themselves... but none of the restores were tests of the backup 
 ml> and they were not done on duplicate machines... only on the 
 ml> original machine when it had a failure or data loss...

 SD> Yep, just because you didn't do what I did, doesn't mean that
 SD> backup testing doesn't get done.  It's just an uncommon practice,
 SD> that's all, but it's nice to know you have a good backup in case
 SD> you -really- need it.

this is true... back in the day, i fought many battles with backup software
and devices... i remember one incident where we did test the backups...
they passed verification during the backup process but were useless 5
minutes later for a bare metal restoration... we swapped drives and
everything was the same... we changed tapes to another brand... same
problem... we went to a different format... same problem... the
manufacturers had no answers and wanted $$$ to work on the problem
:rolleyes:  yeah, thanks but no thanks... /me smells a scam...  i had one
client who went to DAT and still had the same problems... different
manufacturer and tapes altogether...

 SD> In any case, if one keeps experiencing bad backups, I'd take a look
 SD> at your backup process or your media to see what's causing that.

brand new tapes properly adjusted for first time use (fast forwarding and
rewinding) would be unreadable the next time they were put in the same tape
deck... see above... new hardware didn't fix it and neither did new
media...

i'm NOT saying that all of the backup processes failed... but it was enough
of a battle to be unforgettable and very painful... i had clients go to
other folks for backup services and they also had the same types of
failures... i don't know what the problem was and these days, while i do
still have tape decks and tapes available that i'd like ot be able to use,
i don't go thru the trouble or consider tape to be a viable and supportable
backup solution...

the /only/ backup process i've ever had reliable and repeatable success
with was syncing to another disk or cloning to another disk... both have
their drawbacks, of course... downtime being the major one...

)\/(ark

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