Disk vs. tape is a very hot topic these days and is on most people’s radar for their backup solution. It’s also a polarizing topic – different people and vendors have different recommendations and solutions.

Tape backup is running in 2nd place to disk as a backup solution, but tape still has a great number of benefits therefore it should be with us for a long time yet. While disk is less fussy about the throughput of your backup systems and is superb at rapid restores it is still more expensive as a medium than tape. Meanwhile, tape is cheap and boasts incredible write speeds. So when to use disk and tape and what are the financial impacts.