Hello,
In January we started using an Unitrends appliance (Recovery 833) for our backup solution, I am pretty happy with it so far. The solution included using their archive unit, moving us from a tape based archiving process to a disk based process. Once a month the archive unit is used to save our last set of master back jobs to removal hard drives, this also has worked will. I am now wondering how to properly and safely handle these hard drives.
Our previous process with tapes had me removing them form the tape library and carrying them across our parking lot to a separate building. This allowed the latest set of backups to be available for immediate recover if needed. The previous months set would be brought back for storage in our vault for a few months then moved to our long term records retention site in another town. I was thinking of using the same process for my hard drive. Tape cartridges came with their own plastic cases that offered some small degree of protection, hard drives do not.
What I am looking for is a recommendation / suggestion on the best way to protect, transport, store our collection of archive hard drives. I was thinks of a small four (04) drive container for local storage and transportation and a larger forty-eight capicity for long term storage in our retention facility.
Thank you for your import and thoughts.
Conor E. C. Brennan
Application Support Coordinator