There are many people that are both curious and skeptical on how can tape compete with their counterpart, harddisk drive. When the tape lost its data, it have to perform a tape data recovery immediately so as to prevent further losses that could have an negative impact on the business operations of organizations.
How can a tape cartridge be damaged? It can be damaged from smoke, dropping into the water, or simply just dropping from high levels. It can also be damaged from the exposure from the sun, extreme temperature, internal mechanism failure, and errors that are located found within the tape’s file span.
With more organizations using tape as a storage media, damages done by water, absence of oxide, folds in the tape material, sliced edges, bad oxide and even frictional damage tape data can be recovered from tapes. There are generally two types of tape data recovery. These are known as physical recovery and logical recovery.
What is actually physical tape data recovery?
When there is a physical damage on the tape, a physical tape recovery is applicable. Physical damage such as cartridge crack, tape damage, failure in the internal mechanism of the tape and etc may prevents the data from being read efficiently.
Another reason for physical recovery can be due to the deterioration of magnetic coatings on the actual tape surface, broken or cracked wheels, twisted or folded tape, creased tape edges, broken tape, stretched tape, and etc.
Most places that are dealing in tape data recovery guarantee a high physical recovery rate of 98%. They claimed that they have trained professionals to execute this type of task.
When you have dropped your tape into mud, water or simply dropped from high levels, and felt that there could be some damaged done to the tape. It is important to get the tape to those recovery companies and get them repair as soon as possible.
Can logical recovery help in tape data recovery?
Logical tape data recovery is more complicated than physical recovery, and is also more expensive than the normal recovery techniques.
We need logical recovery is when the data was successfully recorded on the tape, however for some unknown reasons, if it cannot be read. You have to quickly find a way to solve this issue. Also, it does not show any visible form of damage to the tape and the exterior of the tape itself.
In order for the technician to execute the recovery procedures properly, he has to use multiple versions of the tape recovery software and take many “passes” at the tape using it.
You can easily pieced back the damage or lost tape data, but the rate of success of logical tape data recovery is much lower than physical tape recovery.