Is there an Industry recognised % Success rate for backups?

[Colin_Campbel1]

Hi,

Hope someone can answer this for me.

As above, is there a % success rate that's recognized for backup jobs as successful?

E.G- Is 95% success rate regarded as successful?

If there is not any standard accpeted rate then no problem, as long as someone can let me know.

I need to answer this for a meeting tomorrow and cant find any joy on the web.

Thanks in advance

[Colin_Campbel1]

Anyone?

Thanks

[joshua_cauthen]

I would only recognize 100% as successful.  Imagine trying to keep your job by telling an executive that you were able to restore 95% of a mission critical database.

[Ken_Putnam]

I'd have to agree with Joshua

if ANY backup job gets an error, track down the cause and fix it ASAP

Where I've worked, if you did anything else, you better have a fresh copy of your resume ready to start circulating - from home

Message Edited by Ken Putnam on 02-14-2008 10:34 AM

[Jim2]

I agree that a successful backup means 100% recovery.  Therefore it is meaningless to quote a recovery rate of either 0 or 100%.  The rates that I have seen/quoted reflect how many backups are successful.  A rate of 95% would indicate that 95 of 100 backups are usable (100% of the data is recoverable).

As for the initial question, how many backups are successful industry-wide, using the definition above, the last "number" I heard was "most backups are NOT recoverable".  The reasons include (this is old information, the technology may have improved, but operators have not) is the "verify after writing" is disabled because it takes too much time; the media failed, usually tape, either from age, climate failures (mold or flaking and static electricity if the humidity was wrong), print-through ("bits" from one layer of tape affected an adjoining layer); mislabeling (not so much a problem with modern robotics).

I was looking for a modern statistic on this subject.