Article on data rot on CD's

From: Rob O'Donnell <classiccmp.org_at_irrelevant.fsnet.co.uk>
Date: Wed Jul 28 19:00:12 2004

At 22:50 28/07/2004, Teo wrote:

>Shouldn't he have a permanent backup tape every so often in the cycle? If
>you screw up or delete a file and don't notice it quickly it will get lost
>in the rotating cycle. The major problem I see companies forgetting is
>offsite storage of backups in case of fire or something like that. Most
>companies would not survive a fire because their financial backups would be
>gone.

Back in my previous employment, we had a customer who were very strict on
doing backups (on DDS2) every night. Once done, the tapes were locked in
the safe, for security. Smallish thing, more of a fire-safe than anything
else.

Everything was fine... until the day they were broken into, and their
computers and server were stolen. And so was the safe!

We and they had some 6 hours of major panic as we hunted for any copies of
anything we could find (and we did find a several week old ad-hoc copy of
their data) until they got a call from the police saying they had found the
safe by a nearby railway line, complete with tapes still inside.

Subsequently, the tapes got taken home instead..

After this incident, all the computers were locked down in security
cabinets. The keys were all labeled up. And put in the replacement safe.

You can probably work out the story the next time they were broken into..
Received on Wed Jul 28 2004 - 19:00:12 BST