Backup tapes have been used for decades in the corporate environment for business continuity or disaster recovery. Individual tapes typically contained a snapshot of the company's documents and e-mails for a particular day that gave information technology departments peace of mind in knowing that their data were available in the event of a natural or man-made disaster. But over time, older tapes simply accumulated in storage and were all but forgotten until needed for an audit or, more recently, litigation.
At that point, when the tapes became part of the discovery process, they struck fear into the hearts of legal professionals. Who could know what was on the tape, since it was truly "everything," without a comprehensive search capability? And information technology personnel were equally fearful about restoring tapes, especially those created with older backup systems, which would require a simulation of the legacy tape environment that had probably been replaced long ago. For these reasons, backup tapes acquired the reputation for being somewhat of a Pandora's box when it came to discovery -- nobody wanted to open them for fear of what might be inside.
Difficulties in retrieving large amounts of data from tapes when large amounts of data are involved, ranging from the relatively high costs to the often laborious data-restoration process, historically have made this popular storage medium a less than ideal choice for the long-term archiving and retrieval of business-critical information. Slow deduplicating and short lifespan of backup formats have also contributed to the perception of tape being undesirable and very expensive for discovery purposes.
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Source: law.com
By: Tom O'Connor
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