Disk-to-disk (D2D) backup involves copying data from one hard drive to another, providing faster access to information than tape backups. However, hard drives have a higher failure rate and require redundant backups. Tape backups are stable but require translation and physical transportation.
Disk-to-disk (D2D) is a computer data backup scheme that involves moving information from one physical disk to another, with the source and backup hardware usually being hard drives. Using a hard drive to back up data from a computer system is distinctly different than more traditional types of backup architectures, such as using a tape backup or optical storage media. One of the biggest differences between disk-to-disk backup and other forms of long-term data archiving is that the backup disk is usually in the same format as the source disk, which means that problems may occur when transitioning from one to another, and the problems that can arise from deconstructing an entire file system are not necessarily present. Another feature that can make disk-to-disk backup desirable is that a hard disk allows non-sequential or random access to its contents, unlike other media which can force a system to linearly walk through all the data it have been saved to find a single file or record.
When dealing with the backup and long-term archiving of sensitive or valuable computer information, tape archive systems have been one of the more traditional formats available. This is largely because tapes are stable, have a low occurrence of failures, and are largely a physical storage medium that, by itself, does not rely on mechanisms stored on the tape for recovery. Some of the drawbacks of using tape as a backup medium are that tape only supports sequential and linear access to data, the data needs to be translated into the format supported by the tape, and the tape itself needs to be physically transported for tape duplication on occur.
Using a disk-to-disk backup system reduces some of the complications that a tape-based backup might involve. If you are backing up a hard drive to another hard drive, one of the easiest methods is to use disk cloning techniques to create an exact duplicate of the source disk. A hard drive also allows random access to the information it contains, so that recovery of a particular file or directory can be done quickly and easily. Unlike tape, the data does not need to be translated into a separate format for archiving, meaning a backup disk can be used to perform a disk-to-disk backup across a network at a remote offsite location.
One of the biggest potential disadvantages of using disk-to-disk backup is that the hardware used in a hard drive has a higher failure and error rate than a tape system. Also, a hard drive is not an independent physical storage medium and relies on electronic hardware and other storage mechanisms to write and retrieve data. However, many of the problems with a disk-to-disk backup scheme can be mitigated by the use of redundant hard drives for backup. Some systems also include tape backups in addition to a disk-to-disk backup to ensure there is no chance of catastrophic data loss.
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