In many companies and other business establishments, data storage is heavily relied on to ensure company information is kept safe. One of the common storage media used for bigger businesses is the data tape. This storage media comes in various sizes and shapes, and provides very reliable storage for large amounts of data. However, there will be times when tape data recovery is essential, when the tape is either exposed to elements of nature, or has had a hardware error.

Tape data recovery is usually a very straightforward and simple process, even if the data has been lost due to software problems, backup failures, overwritten media, drive failure, physical tape damage, broken tapes, water damaged tapes or smoke damaged tapes. These are of course some of the more common reasons for lost data on tapes, however, you should rest assured that it is very straightforward to recover what was lost. All that it would involve is sending your tape to a company offering tape data recovery services.

Most tape data recovery service companies are able to recover the data from LTO formats, Sony AIT, seven-track cartridges, DC 2000 mini data cartridges, 4 mm DAT and DDS tapes. Of course, the list goes on, but these are some of the most common ones that are affected and hence recoverable. Generally, the companies will require that you send your tape to them for them to do an assessment and analysis of the problem. Once they have determined what caused the failure, they will be able to determine how they will recover the data as well as how much of it they can recover. Once they have determined that, they will contact you to give you an idea of the price and turnaround time, at which point you are required to accept or refuse the job.

Once you have accepted the job and they have started, they would need to do their recovery in a dust free room. This is important because tape can be easily damaged by dust settling on it. In this kind of room, the dismounted tapes and drives are examined, and the drive is forced to read around the bad sectors or areas to allow recovery to proceed. Once it has been able to do that, the tape is then imaged and a copy is created. The recovered data is then transferred to a new drive tape so you can continue to have your data stored safely.

Tape data recovery is very simple and effective once you identify a tape data recovery services company that has a good track record of retrieving the majority of data for clients. Although you stand the risk of losing some of the data, the majority of the data on the tape is easily retrievable and transferable to another device.