In 1992, we were selling 40Megabyte hard drives for £430 including installation. At the same time, a tape streamer with a 40MB capacity cost £100 – less than a quarter of the hard drive cost. It would back up the entire contents of the hard drive onto a single tape.

Now, a 400GigaByte hard drive costs £100. In 1990s terms it would equate to over £4million!

Similarly, a backup device (tape) now costs over £1,000 – 10 times the cost of the 400GB hard drive – and £2-3,000 for a top-specification unit.

Small wonder, then, that the average home user / small business user doesn’t automatically install a tape backup unit as a matter of course. “It’s just not worth the expenditure.”