Tape Backup ~  Tape drives have been the traditional method of backing up data. A tape drive would run each night and make a physical backup of the information onto magnetic media.  Tapes would be switched out daily/weekly/monthly/annually and stored in a fire proof box when not in the drive. 

Tape drives have traditionally known to be troublesome.  Drives required regular cleaning, drives would fail and replacements would be impossible to find.  In fact, the manufacturers would replace the drives with newer models making the tapes unreadable making the backups COMPLETELY USELESS!  What next?  Find a working used drive from somewhere and recover the data. 

Thankfully we have never been faced with this horror with any of our clients, but we have seen this in some network analysis. 

We recommend using other more reliable backup methods.  A combination of methods would be ideal ensuring fast recover and failsafe procedures.