![]() However, in some situations, you might want to recover data further back than the previous day. If the data was not too volatile, a daily backup means that up to one day’s work might be lost if a disaster occurs. History of Data Backup: Location of Backup – Onsite, Off-site This in turn fueled the growth of companies that offered the service of picking up the magnetic media used for daily backup and storing them in well-protected and environmentally safe locations. This solved the size and cost for mini-computers but the problem of how to store the backup still remained. They were smaller, cheaper, and faster with a capacity of up to 100GB of data. The technology that evolved was magnetic tape cartridges. The magnetic tape drives had become more powerful but were still expensive and required special conditions. This meant that a cheaper solution was needed for backups. Mini-computers were significantly cheaper than the mainframes and could be installed in normal offices. This meant that branch offices or subsidiaries would run their own data processing needs on mini-computers. Instead of an organization centralizing all computing work with a large mainframe in a corporate data center, the computerization was decentralized and moved closer to where the work and data were centered. The 1980s and 1990s saw the rise of distributed computing. HDDs were not only faster, but they could also be set up to run automated backups. This was driven by a reduction in cost and an increase in the capacity of HDDs. It took until the 1990s for HDD to become popular again. Even though HDDs were hugely instrumental in the development of the personal computer, it was not a viable backup option in the 1950s. They started off extremely expensive, upwards of thousands of dollars, and could only store a few megabytes of data. Shortly after the magnetic tape, in the 1950s, IBM developed the first Hard Disk Drive or HDD. The Return of the Hard Disk Drive, SD cards, and Flash Drives However their capacity was limited, and there was the risk of damage to the backed-up disks and drives when stored in the same location as the business. Data could be easily stored and moved between devices. It overtook magnetic tape storage by being both transportable and cost-effective. The 1970s saw the advent of the floppy disk followed by writable CDs/DVDs, and flash drives. Floppy, CDs, DVDs: The New Age of Exceptionally Portable Backup It mitigated the risk of backup tapes being kept on-site and liable to damage. This led to an industry of off-site magnetic tape storage. The magnetic tape became the de-facto long-term storage for a backup device. Magnetic tapes became so popular that if you wanted to show a computer working, you showed the tape drive whirring away. The magnetic tape had what at that time seemed to be the monumental capacity of 2.3MB of data. When IBM released their new IBM 701 in 1952, it came with a 925-pound floor standing box that could read and write tapes with fast stop and start times. ![]() In these catastrophic situations, you want to be able to restore a copy of the data from a good copy.Īlthough most of the attention was on the rapid increase of speed and capacity of hard disks, backup storage, such as the magnetic tape were also improving in leaps and bounds. For example, the computer site burned down, or the data is corrupted by a software update. It needed to be protected not so much from hackers but from internal loss or destruction. Organizations realized that data was what kept the business running, they knew it had to be protected. Once computers started to be used by organizations for data processing, the need for backup storage became obvious. Thus, storage requirements were limited to programs and output results. In the early days of computing, computers were more for numerical calculations and less for data processing. Magnetic Tape Storage To Support Complex Data Processing Unfortunately, these media types were not particularly reliable and could easily be damaged. Punch cards were closely followed by paper tapes. IBM found its roots with the punch card and expanded its use beyond data entry, processing, and storage. The punch card technology that came in with the Industrial Revolution could collect and store large amounts of data. The earliest “large” storage media was probably punch cards with which you could store your program or calculation results. History of Data Backup: Evolution of Devices Punch Cards For Basic, Limited Processing
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