Removable Media Backup

Floppy, Zip, CD, DVD

Removable Media Backup used to be about all there was. If you really had money, you bought a tape drive (then pulled your graying hair out!).

Floppies were ok, just slow, back when floppies were expensive.

Explain myself? Ok. When floppies started getting cheap, they started failing MUCH more often. I wouldn't rely on a single floppy if I had to walk more than 20 feet with it to the destination - I'd make two just in case one failed; and often one did!

You can still use floppies today if you want...

"Optical is the way to go, right?"

CDs and DVDs have there place. Archive purposes, particularly for photos and movies. Originally, and sometimes still today, many users ran into a lot of problems where they either could not burn the media at all, or, worse yet, the burn appeared successful but the data wasn't there when checked on another machine later.

Windows XP with built-in CD burning helped quite a bit; the jury is still out on DVDs, though.

Cardinal Rules for using Removable Media Backup

• Use high quality media, cheap is as cheap does.
• Verify (preferably on another PC) that the data was written.
• Make two copies MINIMUM.
• Take off site.
• Protect removable media backups from extreme environmental conditions.

In my opinion, daily backups that used to be made to removable media are now better done to USB Flash devices. Faster, more reliable, smaller - and probably even cheaper. (I love Buy.com sales & rebates.)

CD & DVD are most appropriate for the archives, but again, cheap is as cheap does. Some of these cheap CDs may not last longer than 5 - 10 years, if that. Only time will tell, but let others find out the hard way.