The Daily Tape
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 and over. When the terrible day came to retrieve a database that had hundreds of clients files on it, the tape had broken - literally - from too much usage.

Don't expect your tapes to last a lifetime, rotate them and replace them on a regular basis.

On Track??
When one customer called, several years ago, saying that her system was down - we ran to help. Knowing that we had installed her a tape drive and personally purchased extra tapes, labeled them and even purchased a small fire-proof box for her to store them in - we felt sure that we had covered all 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 we 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.

It's Just A Magnet!
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 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 day's 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 us a few hours to figure out exactly what had happened - to his horror a magnetized business card that he had paper clipped to the top inside of his briefcase was erasing the tapes as soon as he closed the case - everyday. He still takes those daily trips to the bank - without the magnet - but was also one of our first Remote Backup customers.