Monday 31 December 2012

The fastest way to send data

Everyone thinks of super-fast optical fibres as being the best way to transfer data from one location to another.  Big organisations generate a lot of data, and in the case of one that I know, 1 terabyte is gathered every day.  It was expensive to gather that data and it is important that it is not lost, so a backup copy is kept on another site 10km away.

How is the data sent? 

By motorbike courier on a backup tape!

Who would have thought that the fastest way to transfer data would be by motorbike?

Small note:  OK, it probably takes a long time to write the data onto the tape, and that should be taken into consideration, but that spoils the story a bit!

2 comments:

John Chapman said...

The only thing which surprises me is their choice of backup media.

Plasma Engineer said...

What would you recommend John? It isn't my field of expertise, but I'm just interested.