According to recent survey, the process of backing up and archiving enterprise’s data continues to be one of the key problems for IT managersxii. When something fails during the process, messages and error codes displayed are incomprehensible and do not assist the IT manager for further investigations. Since they are many components involved within the system including media, drives, possible libraries or enclosures, data path, control path, server and software, IT managers are frustrated since they waste too much time trying to diagnose problems.

On tape-based systems, as tape is used and reused, it needs to be replaced. For this reason, all tapes come with a recommended age and usage limit. However many of the tape management solutions do not track this information. Even in those solutions that do, once a tape has been ejected from the system, perhaps taken offsite for disaster recovery, the information about the tape is lost. This makes tracking the age and usage of tape media to avoid errors difficult, at best. Some software tools attempt to deal with issues like tracking errors and system/components usage by analysing the data collected from specific tests.

Optical disc tools

Optical disc software applications are generally benchmark tools, which can test the performance of CD and DVD drives and recorders. However they provide several extra functions to check the disc quality as well as retrieve disc information.

HDD tools

An increasing number of products for PCs are offering embedded fault diagnosis software: products like IBM’s Drive Fitness Test and Western Digital’s Data Lifeguard are installed onto the HDD before shipment.

If a disk fault is detected, the drive itself can predict failures and notify users as to whether or not there is a problem with the HDD, before the PC’s power is turned on. It is not clear whether or not those drive manufacturer applications offer a higher level of precision in diagnosis than the SMART standard, designed to output fault diagnosis reports via the AT attachment (ATA) interface.

Magnetic tape monitoring tool

There are currently very few software applications monitoring tape and drive quality available on the market. Those that are available can be classified into 2 categories:

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• Storsentry and TESM are in-band software applications using agents that collect data from storage devices. Both reports issues related to tape drive and media quality and performances.
• - DLTSage and HP StorageWorks L&TT are out-band software applications that require running specific tests and may require pre-patterned tape. They are designed by drive manufacturers and can allow for drive diagnostics before returning the drive to the manufacturer.