Through the course of a long career I have worked with many types of tape backup appliances, and consider myself a reasonably knowledgeable user of these systems. I have come to believe that tape does not belong in any serious backup strategy if any other data storage alternative can be found. Admittedly, in some cases the cost of tape per Gigabyte of storage can’t be beat, but the cost savings are often artificial when you consider the massive amount of human effort wasted struggling with a tape backup or restore that doesn’t work.