Why not use an RDX based solution rather than tapes? (Basically RDX drives are ruggedized external hard drives that fit in a drive like a tape drive. I have a couple of customers who decided to go with these rather than tapes when they bought their last backup devices, and they love them. http://www.rdxstorage.com/RDX-Solutions/ James From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Jim Kenzig Sent: Monday, June 07, 2010 1:34 PM To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [THIN] Re: System Back-up solution. I think that is a bad idea. In the end you still need tapes. I would look at a dedupe unit. It saves the files to a disk for quick restore, but also allows you to back the files up to a tape. Something like the HP dedupe unit here is what we are probably going to go with. http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF06b/12169-304616-3755723-3755723-3 755723-3896393-3954793-3954794.html Jim Kenzig http://www.kenzig.com On Mon, Jun 7, 2010 at 1:24 PM, Doug Rooney <Doug@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: Greetings all. We currently have DLT VS1 tape back-up as well as USB 2.0 connected external drives. We are using Backup Exec for the tapes and custom batch programs for the external drives, which by the way are connected on a separate back-up server. Our tapes are old and have many failures, upper management has decided to abandon tapes and go only with external drives. My question is, has anyone done this? What software do you use, Pros / Cons. The problem I am experiencing now is in order to back-up the data bases, I need to take them off-line. Thank you for any advice you can offer. (Exchange 2003, Windows 2003(multiple), one set of external drives are 500GB the other is 250GB) Thank You ~Doug Rooney Sonoma Tilemakers IT Manager 7750 Bell Rd. Windsor Ca, 95492 it@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx