The Diskette Drive: Woefully Inadequate
Relative Cost Indicator: $
At the absolute minimum, most PCs purchased by
small businesses come with a built-in backup device, which uses extremely
inexpensive media and is universally accepted.
So why don’t more people use 3.5-inch
diskette drives for backups? For starters, they’re very
slow, relatively
unreliable and extremely limited in capacity (1.44MB).
Moreover,
backing up a 20GB hard drive that’s a mere 20 percent full would
take about 2,800 diskettes -- making it highly
unlikely that such a ridiculously cumbersome process would be
repeated with enough regularity and consistency to be effective.
Under the best-case scenario, diskettes can be used occasionally
to back up a handful of individual data files, such as a few Microsoft
Word documents (.doc) or Microsoft Excel (.xls) workbook files.
Note:
Many small business managers think the Iomega Zip
Drive is a backup drive. However, the relatively high media
costs, slow performance and limited 100MB to 250MB capacity
make the Iomega Zip Drive a cumbersome tool with largely the
same limitations as using a diskette drive for system backups.
Data Backup Options Action Items
What kind of backup system and backup media
does your company presently use?
How did you initially arrive at this
selection?
Are you aware of the pros and cons of your
current backup system?
Have you had any reliability or support
problems with your existing backup system?
Can you backup all required files on a full
system backup without the need to swap out media?
If you decide to ramp up the amount of
backup media that your company uses, would your current backup
system and media selections still be cost-effective?
Is your backup system performance fast
enough to complete a full system backup during a window of low
system activity?
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