This includes not only the cost of the device but also the cost of the storage media. Calculate how long backups will take. Many disasters might destroy your backups along with your computer system. In the past, businesses typically relied on floppy disks to back up data. However, as computer applications have grown in size, floppies have generally been supplanted by newer backup formats.
Tape drives are the most popular option for data backup.
They can store large amounts of data at a relatively low cost, and are fast enough to back up an entire network overnight. Additional tapes are very inexpensive, which allows businesses to make multiple backups for added security. The only real downside of tape drives is that accessing data tends to be relatively time consuming, requiring the drive to rewind or fast forward the tape to the proper spot. There are several tape formats currently on the market, each targeting systems of different sizes. For individual users, the Travan format provides a good compromise between low cost and high storage capacities.