Manufacturers using tapes take nine hours to get up and running

That’s among key finding from a study by IT support company Connect. In fact, it also finds that 5% of manufacturers surveyed need more than three days to get back online, while one in 10 have lost important data as a result of back-up failure. Connect CEO Mark Macgregor, says: “These results make scary reading for UK manufacturers. If any business is out of action for 12 hours, that could cause some serious damage to its reputation. If the blackout lasts three days it is likely to be catastrophic.” Interestingly, only 11% of manufacturers surveyed back up their data over the internet to a secure offsite data centre. Says MacGregor: “Back-up tapes have been around since the 1970s and any modern manufacturer should be seriously considering more up-to-date options. Not only are they cumbersome, insecure and easily misplaced; the costs of better alternatives are falling fast. What’s more, one of the major problems with using tapes is that they are often not treated with enough care – if you leave them in your office and there’s a fire or flood, you’ve lost both your original data and the backups.” Other findings include: 89% of UK manufacturers are still using back-up tapes to store their data; and 28% leave the tape in the office, 29% take them home and 32% give their tapes to a back-up company. Additionally, there’s a one in three chance of UK manufacturers experiencing a major server problem every six months; 77% of manufacturers have failed to test their backup systems in the last six months; and 43% of manufacturers have never attempted to recover a single file.