We all sleep better having more back-up options, with disk and online either complementing tapes or replacing them altogether. Because these options offer greater reliability, security, and performance, no longer do we ask whether we can back-up. Now we ask: how fast can we recover? The new bottleneck is bandwidth: how much data can we move between the back-up and our restored systems. Recovery takes time; sometimes a long time.

Moving gigabytes and sometimes terabytes of data though LAN or Internet/WAN connections means that backups can sometimes take 24 hours or more. Disk and online back-ups are a blessing and a curse. We back up more data, which means there is more to move. So even when you do everything right and have multiple back-ups in various locations, you may still be down for a day or more just because you are moving data around.

How to address this issue? The obvious but difficult solution is to continually cull data. Remove unwanted files, e-mail messages, and the like. While the cheapest solution, it is the most difficult since it requires asking stressed out professionals and staff to take time out to manage their files. Other solutions like SANs (Storage Area Networks) and real-time backup and replication become real expensive real quick.