Hard drives come in amazing sizes today, TeraByte, Multi TeraByte, and coming soon, ExaByte (1000 TeraByte).

Now thats a lot of storage, the Library of Congress is said to have a copy of every valuable book ever written. It is estimated that the size of the library today could fit in 3,000 TeraBytes.

All being said, this massive amount of data needs to be protected. Backups are most important, and a multiple copy off-site method is the best option fro these reasons:

• Off site means no matter what happens locally, fire, power surges, theft, disgruntled employee, or anything else you have a safety net.
• Automated backups are the safest, yet you need to verify they are being completed and verify it is a good set of data.
• There are a few online backup websites to consider Mozy and Carbonite seem to be the leading offerings. Remember online backups are only as good as the website behind it. They can close thier doors at any moment, usually at the worst moment.
• External drives are the most cost effective and dependable because they are on hand, completely secure, and worst case scenario you have a actual physical copy of your data to have a professional restoration.
• All in all you need more than a single backup plan for your important data.