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.
Test and protect your backups. Don't rest easy just because you have a backup system. It is important to test your backups by restoring them to another machine from time to time. Also, as you practice a backup routine, take copies of your data backups away from the location of the machine. That way, a fire or flood disaster would be less likely to destroy both copies of the data.
Floppy fire fight: A photographer of the digital persuasion had just finished a trip to three different cities where he recorded the images of a client's possessions for insurance purposes. The very next day -- before he had a chance to make copies of his work -- a fire destroyed his apartment. Not all was consumed, though. While sifting through the debris, he found the box of 1.44 floppies where all of the images of the last trip were stored. We put on our fire hats and went to work. One by one, slowly, they came back -- like the Phoenix rising from the ashes. We managed recovery of about 90% of the images, saving our client's relationship with his customer and preventing the cost of re-shooting the 10-day project.
