Tape Data Migration and Recovery

Migrating Data from 20-year-old 9-track Reels

In order to cut tape storage costs with its offsite vendor, a major technology firm decided to consolidate data from 141 9-track tapes to optical media. Those tapes of a mere 300 MB each were costing close to $1 per month each to store. Not having the proper equipment to read the tapes they asked their tape archive storage vendor for a reference.

PeakData Services got the project based on its experience working with other clients of the archive provider. The 141 tapes, all 20-years old or older, were shipped to PeakData's secure laboratory in Colorado. The project didn't go as smoothly as hoped.

Forty-five of the tapes produced unrecoverable read errors. Conventional tape drives would simply hang on such errors and be unable to continue reading. Using special software PeakData was able to essentially skip unreadable data and recover the vast majority of the data from 30 of those tapes. The 15 remaining tapes were a different story.

Those exhibited stiction problems. Stiction occurs when a tape's ferric oxide surface takes on a glue-like state as a result of a chemical reaction that can happen in old media. The result can contaminate the tape drive head and render the tape unreadable. Moreover, it leaves a residue behind that will contaminate all subsequent tapes as well.

These tapes had to be specially treated to eliminate stiction before they could be safely and accurately read. The good news: the data on these tapes was recovered. And, like the rest of the data in the project, was migrated to optical media. The lesson of this story is very simple. To head off problems before they occur make sure you have a full grasp of the state of tape media in your archive, whether that media is directly in your hands or the hands of a third party.

The era of tape in the data center is pushing 50 years. Unfortunately, for many users of tape they may own some that are just about that old!

All kidding aside, tapes of a mere 10-20 years can be subject to degradation and potential data loss, even when they are stored in the most pristine conditions. Couple this with the fact that archive requirements are growing, not shrinking, and it is easy to see that there is a great deal of data at risk.

That's why migration strategies should be a key aspect of any archive management plan. PeakData Services is here to help. We have the expertise and specialized tools to simplify your migration process.

Whether you are migrating data from relatively "fresher" media or media that is pushing the limit we can assure you that we will get your data moved.

We take pride in being able to recover data from the most challenging media, whether it is 9-track reel tape, 3480 and 3490-E cartridge tapes, DLT, LTO and others.

We can even recover data from older chromium dioxide tapes that can present classic problems like stiction. Issues like this can stop a tape drive cold. Our proprietary reconditioning processes fight through such issues and enable us to capture the maximum amount of data possible from first byte to last.

Call us with your stickiest problem! Or use our convenient contact form.

Record Retention Examples
Industry	Regulation(s)	Information / Implication	Retention Period
Financial Services	Check 21	Check Images	7 years
	SEC 17a-3, a-4	Type of information required	6 years
	NASD 3010 / 3110	Similar to SEC 17a-3, a-4	6 years

Public Companies > $75M	Sarbanes Oxley	Financial audit and reporting documents	7 years

Healthcare	HIPAA	Medical records	Min. 6 years or 2 years after death
Healthcare	42 CFR	Medical records for Medicare	5 years

Food & Drug	21 CFR Part 11	All FDA regulated programs
		Food mfg, processing, packaging	2 years after release
		Drug mfg, processing, packaging	3 years after distribution
		Biological product mfg records	5 years

All	U.S. Patriot Act	Customer records, financial activity	5 years after record made or account closed
All	U.S. Patriot Act	Customer records, financial activity	5 years after record made or account closed

Financial / Medical	Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act	Disclosure of non-public personal information	N/A

Our services encompass migration and recovery of data from: old data tape, 9-track tape, reel tape, square tape and models including 3480, 3490, 4480, 4490, DLT, DAT, AIT, LTO, Exabyte and others. We can handle tape that has been degraded and/or deteriorated. Tape that is damaged and seemingly unreadable. We migrate data from any kind of tape media to any other type of media including DVD and disk drives. Formats supported include: LTO formats including LTO1, LTO2, LTO3, LTO4; Super DLT, DLT8000, DLT7000, DLT II, DLT III, DLT IV, TK50/TK70; Sony AIT, AIT2 and AIT3; Travan Data Cartridge; 1/2" Open Reel and Cartridges such as 7-track, 9-track, 3480, 3490, 3570, 3590, 9840; DC2000 mini data cartridge;DC2000 mini data cartridge. Tapes are carefully examined and processed; Proprietary tools enable us to read around the bad area to recover your tape data successfully; Tapes are imaged, a copy of the disk is created, and recovered data is transferred to the new media.