Storing your data copies is just as important as making them. All media have a range of temperatures that they can safely survive. Long term storage in high humidity can also affect many backup media choices. Pick a place for your data storage out of the light, heat, extreme cold, and of moderate humidity. Test your backups periodically and use fresh media on a scheduled basis to insure the highest possible integrity for your backups.
Don't keep your backups in your car. To convince yourself of this, put a cassette tape and a CD on the dashboard of your car and leave it there all day in August. Perform this test only on material that you consider trash in the first place.
Rotate your media
so that you always have at least one backup copy from the previous backup. Many will use daily tapes, backing up on Monday to the Monday tape, Tuesday to the Tuesday tape, etc. That way, if you have a failure and your most current backup is bad, you get another shot with the one that's a day older.
Novel Virus: A novelist, fast approaching a publisher's deadline, discovered that her notebook computer -- which contained all of her writing of her latest novel -- would no longer boot. Ignoring the advise of the computer manufacturer that nothing could be done, she called Internet Desk, Inc. to see what could be done. The data recovery was completely successful -- including virus removal, and the notebook computer was returned with the operating system re-installed along with all of the work done on the novel. As an added level of safety, the data files were also placed on a CD. A novel recovery.
