I wonder if there is such a thing as failsafe data storage.

There are basically three FAIL:

1) hardware FAIL
2) user FAIL
3) environment FAIL

if your solution covers all three, you're good.


hardware FAIL

Things like hard drive head crash, raid controller flipout, logic board flipout. Backups (and in most cases, RAIDs) are good against this.


user FAIL

Things like deleting something you shouldn't have, overwriting a file, things the user does that they shouldn't. Incremental backups are good against this.


environment FAIL

Things like hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, theft, terrorists in airplanes. Offsite backups are good against this.


The other aspect is downtime. You often have a choice of data protection that is a balance between cost, speed of recovery, and safety. (you can't have all three, pick TWO) For example, offsite backups are very good for safety but are very poor for speed of recovery. (stole that from "good, fast, cheap, pick TWO")


I work for the Department of Redundancy Department