Ok for those who are unsure about backing up their files let me enlighten you some.
1. CD/DVD disks use dyes which means they are suseptable to failing. This means you should only use these as temporary or quick backups. They have a shelf life of 5-10 years. Sometimes the disks can actually lose data right after burn. This has happend at times. And two backups on disk increase your odds of having one good backup.
2. Hard Drives while thye may fail, they are your safest backup solution. USB hard drives are cheap and easy to use. However i would recomend that you do not keep them plugged in, as hard drives generate alot of heat, and this is one way they fail quickly. Plug these drives in only when backing up large amounts of data and when accesing data. Do not go for the largest you might think 1 1 terabyte drive is awsome, but if that drive fails you lose everything. Your best to have smaller 250-320 gig hard drives as you will not save much buying one large one. And if you lose a smaller drive you lose less info.
The best route that does cost more is a Raid array backup drive. They come in Raid 0, 1, 0+1 here is how it works. Raid 0 uses 3+ drives to put data across all at the same time, Raid 1 uses 2+ drives to mirror the data, raid 0+1 uses 4+ drives passing data across the raid 0 array then mirroring it on the raid 1 drive. The reason why these work so well, is if a drive fails in a raid 0 setup you can remove the bad drive, plug a new one in and the other drives reconfigure the new one with missing parts. So no data loss just time.
3. For those with sensitive information thats not a copyrighted media like music or movies. You can opt for a online backup with a monthly fee. After 9-11 this solution has become very important for bussiness as it has shown that recovering lost data is almost impossible in any kind of disaster. So these online places keep backups of your bcakups. So if they have a disater your material is still safe and available. The cost here is pretty high for normal people but for bussiness its worth looking into.
Finally for those who love USB drives do not use them as backup the cost per gig is way to high. A usb drive averages 10 bucks a gig, while a normal hard drive goes for 1-2 dollars or less a gig.
*NOTE* backup your backup this will insure much less chance of loss. use more then one medium when you can, dvd/cd and hardrive is a good solution if you can not afford a raid array setup which is the best one.
