In an effort to be safe through data loss protection, businesses should combine paper, tape and digital back-ups of all company information, according to a disaster recovery specialist.

Doug Piper, writing for eWeek, said a combination of methods for back-up could ensure that companies could be covered in all situations, particularly if a disaster struck systems and needed to be brought back quickly.

Mr Piper emphasised the inability to rely on tape back-ups alone due to the medium's numerous drawbacks, most importantly their inability to keep operations running during short-term shutdowns as they are not able to be processed quickly.

"Despite great increases in tape speeds, tape drives are still slow compared to disks. Recovering data and applications after a disaster can take several hours or even days, particularly if the tapes must be retrieved from an offsite vault," the expert concluded.

The Disaster Recovery Guide says that serious incidents that could strike a business are on an endless list, with too many factors potentially impacting on a company's good health.

A recent survey for Connect found that one in ten companies has lost important data as a result of a backup failure. The company has now developed a unique online backup service - http://www.connect.co.uk/services/online_backup – for SMEs to ensure they can survive any disaster.