Anvil Sans

One of the most frequent complaints about offsite tape storage is the cost associated with hiring a third party archive to transport and store your data in a secure location. Many businesses attempt to work around this by engaging in their own in-house data storage, but this is often risky and can result in lost or damaged recovery tapes. However, understanding the pricing involved in offsite data storage can help a company develop a plan to avoid as many costs as possible in order to utilize a very valuable and secure service at an affordable rate.

First of all, the primary fees that trouble most companies are the transportation fees. Each time the offsite archive sends a courier to pick up your data you are charged a fee. Since many companies choose to ship their tapes once a month, once a week or even daily those costs can add up quickly. However, by developing a tape rotation schedule that requires long term storage less often, or by shipping or delivering the data on your own, you may be able to drastically reduce the expense of those fees.

Other offsite tape storage fees that bother businesses include the basic storage fee itself. Open reel storage dates back to the origins of storing tapes, wherein the company would simply hang the reels. Today storing your reels on the rack actually costs more money than keeping it in the steel shipping case. Additionally, it is important to negotiate a good rate for recovery fees in your service-level agreement in order to avoid getting hit with potentially steep fees for asking for an unscheduled recovery delivery. This is something handled before the contract is signed, and can save you a great deal of time and money in the future if you remember to haggle over it.