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What media should you backup to?

When you back up your data from your hard disk to another medium such as CD, floppy disk or another hard disk drive you have to ask yourself questions about the data capacity, security and convenience of the medium you are backing up to.

Removable Media

Removable media like CD, DVD, Floppy, Zip, Jaz and tape are the most secure way of making backups providing you store your backup disks in a physically separate location to your computer. There's no point storing backup disks anywhere near you computer because in the event of fire (and possibly theft) you'll lose the backup disks as well.

However storing removable media in a physically different location poses practical problems of access as well as potential confidentiality problems stemming from the fact that other people might discover your backups and from them gain access to your confidential data.  Encrypting backup data sets is a good solution to the latter.

 The other problem with removable media is that their storage capacity is not very large.  In round numbers CDs can store a maximum of about 700MB, Jaz drives about 1000MB and DVDs about 2500 MB.  This is small compared to modern hard drives which may hold 120,000 MB (120GB) or more.

This limited data capacity means you will usually need several CDs or even DVDs to backup the data. This means in turn that you have to be physically around while backups are being made to change the disks. It also means that the disks must be properly labeled. Yet another implication of multi-disk backups is that if one disk in the backup set becomes accidentally scratched or damaged, the whole backup set may be unreadable.

Fixed Media

Fixed media includes options like backing up to another partition of your hard disk, to another physically separate hard disk in your PC or to a hard disk on another PC via a network.

Fixed media backups are normally faster, don't have the  data storage restraints of removable media and don't require you to be in attendance while backups are made. However there are real security problems.

Backing up a different part of your hard drive may be convenient but if your hard drive fails you'll lose your backup as well.

Backing up to a different hard disk in your PC may be fast but if your PC is stolen your backup will be useless.

Backing up to a different PC using a network is an excellent solution provided the other PC is in a different location.  Not everyone has this option available to them.

The Best Option

The best option for you is the one that strikes the best balance of risk versus convenience. A perfectly secure backup system that is highly inconvenient will, almost certainly, be rarely used. A perfectly convenient system that is not secure is not worth having.

Often the best solution is a combination of removable media and fixed media backup.  That's the way many folk work it, including myself.

My daily backups are made automatically using fixed media. In this case to via a network to another PC in the same office. It's, fast convenient and secure against normal mishaps such as hard disk failure.

However it's not secure against fire and total theft. So to guard against that I make weekly backups of my data onto CD and store that in a physically separate location.  It's a pain but it's worth doing.

In the event of a fire I could lose up to a weeks work but no more. This is a risk but for me a survivable risk. Your solution may differ.

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