Where have your tapes been?

John is the storage administrator for a multi-national company. Although business is good, the purchasing department at MMI is under heavy pressure to get the best possible prices for all office supplies. Last year, they substantially reduced their costs for laser printer consumables by purchasing recycled and refurbished toner cartridges from various online sources. So, they purchased "recertified" tape media for their data center. John objected but was overruled by Jane, the purchasing manager, who was given a direct order from the CEO to reduce costs. The company saved 30% on their recent recertified tape media purchases; but with it, came another unexpected expense as a result of its use.

After importing a set of these "recertified" tapes into their automated library, one of them jammed in a tape drive during the weekly full backup operation. The backup job failed, and before it could be rerun, the company was hit hard by the Mydoom Worm, which infected its computers, sending thousands of infected e-mails to its branch offices, customers and partners. The CEO was not pleased and the company found that several of the unused recertified tapes contained the virus.

The tape recycling business is a fairly new phenomenon that is being built on the model of recycling printer cartridges. Unfortunately, though, tape cartridges don't run out of toner that can be replenished to make the tape "like new" or extend its life. While you may be paying less than for a new tape cartridge, the ultimate costs to your business may be enormous.

Obviously, tape users are looking to get the best price possible for all their technology purchases, especially for consumables such as tape and toner cartridges. And you certainly have the right to purchase after-market products if you understand the risks associated with these products. But you may want to consider its reliability and integrity.

Did You Know?

From a user perspective, there are a number of reasons to be concerned when using tapes that are recycled or "recertified."

The biggest concern is your data. You're using tape to protect your most precious asset for long-term archival, to recover from unintentional data loss, and to get your operation back on its feet after a major disaster. Why would you invest all this time and money on data protection systems and procedures, and then use suspect media to actually store the data?

All tape products have a rated lifetime, based on either the number of times it is written to, or the amount of time it can retain data, or both. When a tape cartridge is "recycled," the period of the tape's lifetime is not extended unless the tape itself is replaced. The cartridge may be cleaned up and re-labeled to make it look new, but you can be assured that recycled tape cartridges do not have new tape media. And think about this: Why would someone sell the tape into recycling if it still had a significant amount of useful life left? When you buy a used and recycled tape, you're getting one that may not be as reliable as you would expect from a new tape.

Recycling used tapes that have been written may have residual data on the tape. Just like erasing a magnetic hard disk does not delete all the information stored on the disk, common erasure methods for tapes do not erase all of the data on the tape. In fact, some of the complaints received by tape vendors have been that the user bought a tape with a previous user's data on it. You may also achieve lower-than-expected capacity on these tapes, depending on how they were previously partitioned.

Most of today's high-capacity tapes cannot be erased by degaussing (waving a magnet over the tape to scramble the metallic particles on the tape). Degaussing would erase the pre-recorded servo tracks on these tapes, making them completely unusable. The process to totally erase a tape for re-use is lengthy (at least 2 hours for most of today's tapes) and the people in the recycling business most likely will not take this approach. If anything, these tapes merely have their directory structure erased, leaving all the original data intact on the tape. It's interesting to note that the U.S. federal government mandated that the only way to delete sensitive information from tape is to totally destroy the tape. So if you are considering selling your tapes to a recycler, be aware that you may be giving someone free access to whatever data you've put on those tapes. If you wouldn't sell your hard drives to a third party, you shouldn't sell your used data tapes.

The leading cause of failure on recycled tapes is damage to the tape media caused by mishandling. When used tapes are shipped to the recycler, they are most likely not in the manufacturer's original packaging. Without this protection, the edges of the tapes can be damaged. Since high-capacity tapes do store data to the very edge, read/write errors are prone to occur resulting in slower performance, decreased capacity, or even complete job failure. Severe damage to the tape media can also result in drive jams, requiring a service call and system downtime. When previously used tape cartridges change hands between parties, or when they are shipped without adequate packaging, there is no guarantee of the quality or useful lifetime of the media.

Lastly, on the claim that these used tapes are "recertified"--there is no way for the user to test the amount of wear and degradation that a tape has experienced. While these tapes may pass the simple read/write tests that the recyclers may (or may not) be using, you will be risking increased rates of data errors and decreased performance due to "soft" errors, often resulting in failed backup jobs or missed backup window compliance. Ultimately, you are putting your company's most precious asset, its data, at risk by using these tapes.

If It's Too Good to Be True ...

There are also indications that recycled tapes have been sold as "brand new." These activities are illegal, and harm the customer. The recycled tapes have the same problems described above, but with the added element that the user doesn't know the tape has been previously used. This becomes a further issue when problems arise and both the user and the tape manufacturer cannot identify the reason. Diagnostic tests can determine that a tape has been previously used, and for how long, but that only confirms that the user has been defrauded.

Are these headaches worth the amount of money that you can save by getting tape media a little cheaper? If the price you are being quoted for new tape seems like a "great" deal, it may not be for the real thing. Buyer beware.

What Can We Do?

A recent poll shows that 18% of customers surveyed have, at some point, knowingly purchased used tapes. Cost savings was noted as the overwhelming reason for doing so, though they were not completely aware of the technical aspects of their decision or the added risk they were assuming. It is unknown how many users are buying used tapes that are misrepresented as new. For the protection of your data and to assure the business continuity processes, you may want to double check the tape media that you are purchasing.

The members of the Tape Technology Council value the high quality of their products and the relationship with its customers. We are exploring various ways to ensure that "what you are buying meets the original factory specification." If you believe that you have purchased "new" tape cartridges that you suspect are less than advertised, we would like to know whom you bought them from, how much you paid, and why you think the tapes are counterfeit or recycled. From your responses, we hope to gain a better understanding of this problem to help us decide what to do next. Submit your comments to: www.tapecouncil.org/expert.html.

www.tapecouncil.org

RELATED ARTICLE: BREAKING NEWS!

FalconStor just announced availability of iSCSI Storage Server, powered by IPStor, the first fully featured, seamlessly integrated solution designed specifically for the Microsoft Storage Server 2003 platform. Software will be available from providers of Windows Storage Server 2003-based devices. For more information, visit www.falconstor.com or call 1-631-777-5188.

Rich Harada is president of the Tape Technology Council (Hillsdale, NJ)