Compare
Vaulted Tape vs. Tape Kept On Site
You already own the tapes. The question is only where they sleep, and whether the same event can take both the systems and the backups.
Bring your retention schedule. We will tell you what it actually costs to meet it.
Side by side
| Category | Intervault Media | On-Site Tape |
|---|---|---|
| Same-event loss | Separate hardened site | Fire, flood or theft takes primary and backup together |
| Climate | 70°F ±2°, 50% RH ±5% continuously | Server room conditions, which fail over long weekends |
| Retrieval speed | Scheduled, plus 24/7 emergency | Immediate. On-site wins here |
| Rotation discipline | Fixed schedule, scanned at every handoff | Depends on a person remembering |
| If that person leaves | Unaffected | Rotation quietly stops and nobody notices for months |
| Cost | Recurring per cartridge | Effectively free, until it is not |
| Audit evidence | Timestamped custody per cartridge | A spreadsheet, at best |
The fair case
What On-Site Tape genuinely does better
Keeping tapes on site is fast, free and completely under your control. There is no courier, no schedule, no third party, and a restore starts the moment somebody walks to the cabinet. For operational recovery — last night's set, this week's set — on-site is the correct place for the media and moving it off site would make recovery slower for no benefit. Nobody should be shipping their most recent backup somewhere.
The limit
Where the gap is
The gap is that on-site media shares every fate of the site. Fire, flood, surge, a burst pipe above the comms room, or a theft take the primary and the backup together, because they are in the same building. In South Florida the specific version of this is surge and extended power loss, and an unconditioned room during a multi-day outage is a humidity problem as well as a power one. The answer is not to move the tapes — it is to have a set that is not in that building, which is a different copy rather than a replacement for the one on the shelf.
Our view
The honest verdict
On-site tape genuinely wins on retrieval speed, and for a small shop with a real fire safe it is not indefensible. It fails on the one scenario backups exist for: an event that takes the building. Keep the most recent set on site and vault everything else.
Other comparisons
Air-Gapped Vault vs. Cloud-Only Backup
Cloud backup is faster, cheaper per terabyte, and easier to test. It is also reachable, and that is the whole argument.
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Local Vault vs. a National Records Vendor
The national vendors are competent and enormous, and for a multi-state footprint they are usually the right call. For a South Florida business the trade is different.
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Media Vault vs. a Self-Storage Unit
It happens more than you would think — a unit down the road, a padlock, and a box of tapes. It fails on three separate grounds.
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See the vault before you decide.
Tours are private and by appointment. You will see the vault door, the man-trap entry, and the box sizes in person. No account relationship is required to visit.