I have to admit that I was struggling with the wording of this blog. The reason for this is that I am trying to gauge what  the most common reaction or implementation to reducing restore and recovery times is. I have some strong views on this subject so here is the deal, before clicking read more please note down the one action you feel is most likely to help or  that your organisation has implemented. Then  please post this as a comment back to me.

OK this isn't the most scientific method but I do promise to publish the results up. So what single task/action do I believe drastically reduces restore  times and overheads?  Its not getting faster drives, or dedupe or disk backups or anything hardware related. In my view the most simple method of reducing times is

Have less to restore !

Archive old and unused data out of the backups  and the time spent  recovering data of no  business value is reclaimed. In a race against Usain Bolt I'll win every time if I only have to start 10 metres from the finish line.