Linux Journal: Scary Backup Stories

“Backups. We all know the importance of making a backup of our
most important systems. Unfortunately, some of us also know that
realizing the importance of performing backups often is a lesson
learned the hard way. Everyone has their scary backup stories. Here
are mine.

“Like a lot of people, my professional career started out in
technical support. In my case, I was part of a help-desk team for a
large professional practice. Among other things, we were
responsible for performing PC LAN backups for a number of systems
used by other departments. For one especially important system, we
acquired fancy new tape-backup equipment and a large collection of
tapes. A procedure was put in place, and
before-you-go-home-at-night backups became a standard. Some months
later, a crash brought down the system, and all the data was lost.
Shortly thereafter, a call came in for the latest backup tape. It
was located and dispatched, and a recovery was attempted. The
recovery failed, however, as the tape was blank. A call came in for
the next-to-last backup tape. Nervously, it was located and
dispatched, and a recovery was attempted. It also failed because
this tape also was blank. Amid long silences and pink-slip glares,
panic started to set in as the tape from three nights prior was
called up. This attempt resulted in a lot of shouting.

“All the tapes were then checked, and they were all blank. To
add insult to injury, the problem wasn’t only that the tapes were
blank–they weren’t even formatted! The fancy new backup equipment
wasn’t smart enough to realize the tapes were not formatted, so it
allowed them to be used. Note: writing good data to an unformatted
tape is never a good idea…”

Complete Story