"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored."
A Huxley
I knew a guy, who knew a guy, who had a friend who decided he would save the expense of having to buy the extra hardware and disks to backup his system. Instead, he decided that he would back up his data from drive D to drive E on his computer. He was quite pleased with himself, thinking that he had a perfectly good backup system and that his data was safe. Wrong! If your data is still in your machine, it is not completely safe.
To make matters worse with our friend, his drives D and E were not actually separate hard drives, but logical drives mounted on his one and only hard drive. In the event that his hard drive went south, drive D and drive E was certain to go with it and the economics of his backup system would suddenly take a turn for the worse.
The only protection this type of backup system would provide would be if his original files became corrupted, then he'd be able to retrieve them from the other virtual drive. Slightly better than having no backup system at all, but hardly sufficient protection.
If his two drives had been separate hard drives, he would have at least had some protection in the event that his drive D failed. But again, if your backup is stored on a drive inside your computer, it is not completely safe. A power surge could knock out all the drives in your computer in one quick shot, and so could a lightning strike. Then there is the possibility of theft. And what about a fire, which could leave your data as little more than crispy bits and bytes (umm, sorry about the pun).
Your backup data should not only be removed from your computer, it should be stored at a separate location than your computer. In fact, most insurance companies require that you perform backups and store them at a remote location.
This leads us to the problem of choosing the type of backup media we'll use for our backups. As we just established, in order to back up your data properly, you will need some type of removable media (That's a Techie term for removable tape or drive) to store your data on. There are three basic categories for you to choose from:
Within each of these categories you will find several types of devices to choose from.
Removable Disks
As indicated above, removable disks come in both small and large capacity. Magnetic disks that have a capacity of 500MB or less are usually considered small-capacity disks. These disks can be removed from the drive as they become full and replaced with an empty disk. They are economical and easy to use. In fact, you probably already have one of these drives on your computer . . . . a floppy disk drive.
Unfortunately, the standard floppy disk only holds a maximum of 1.44MB of data. You'd need quite a few of these disks in order to backup large amounts of data. Floppy disks are also available in 2.88MB, but still not a sufficient size to efficiently do large backups. There are other types of small capacity drives. The Iomega ZIP disk is a popular drive, but is only available in 100MB and 250MB capacities.
Large-capacity removable drives are pretty much the same as the small-capacity drives. They store data on magnetic disks, but the storage capacity is much higher - typically 1 to 2 GB. These disks are better suited for backups because it would take less disks to perform larger backups and would probably do fine for businesses with only one or two computers to backup.
Removable hard disk drives has the largest storage capacity available. These drives vary considerably in size and can match the size of fixed hard drives. Plenty of storage space available, but they are more expensive than the floppy type drives.
Removable Optical Disks
Removable optical disks use a laser or some other type of light beam to read and write data to the removable disk. They have fairly large capacities, but are typically rather slow (usually more than 100 milliseconds access time). CD-R and CD-RW disks can store 650MB and are priced reasonably these days. Magneto Optical disks have capacities up to 4.6GB, but are more expensive.
Magnetic Tape
Magnetic tapes provide large storage capacities. Data is stored in a linear manner on spools of the magnetic tape. Because of this method of storage, data is not as readily accessible as it is on a magnetic or optical drive. The tape must wind-through to the position of the data its looking for. But for backup purposes, this is not generally a problem. Magnetic tape is the oldest and probably most popular backup medium for very large backup requirements. Depending upon the technology used, magnetic tape capacity typically ranges between 100MB up to 50GB and more.
In order to choose the best backup device for your needs, you will first have to evaluate the data you need to backup. As with choosing any technology, you should not simply pick the system that works for you now, but consider what your future needs will be. There is no one right choice here. The system that works for you and allows you to maintain a proper backup of your data . . . that is the right choice for you.
Keep those backups happening! 
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