The last few years have seen a number of information technology trends converge, transforming disk-to-disk backup (D2D) from something merely feasible into an attractive addition to the IT portfolio.

DRP and Security Policy TemplatesD2D technology brings many key benefits to your IT infrastructure, including shorter backup windows, faster restores, quicker nearline access, investment protection by leveraging existing tape hardware, and better backup economy through incremental backups.

For several decades, tape drives and tape media have been the preferred enterprise backup solution. But now, modern backup software supports writing to a disk file as though it was another backup device. Often this is implemented by emulating a tape device with special characteristics, allowing the disk file to easily integrate into the rest of the existing software architecture. The common term for this is virtual tape. Some backup software also supports the creation of multiple emulated devices and combining them into virtual tape libraries, referred to as  VTL. D2D backup uses these virtual tapes to save backup data by writing to the VTL, and restores the backup data by reading from the VTL. Using hard disk drives as the underlying storage media brings all the advantages of random access, high volume manufacturing, disk reliability, RAID, and familiar technology.