It used to be that businesses had two data storage media options: hard and floppy disks. Hard disks are still around and remain the gold standard of data security, but transportable data storage media options are now abundant. Your business can store data at remote locations and have constant access to the data via the Internet.

Data can be lost in many ways including the failure of equipment and media, power failure, theft or simply misplacement of media and equipment. To safeguard your business from these potentials pitfalls, use a variety of the many data storage media available:

1. Store data which needs to be transportable on optical disks, such as CD-R and DVD-R media.

2. Backup all data on hard drives, which remain the most reliable data storage media.

3. Outsource your data storage to an off-site, online data storage service.

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Buy transportable media for your employees day-to-day data storage needs.

When you need to get data from one place to another, optical disks such as CD-R and DVD-R media are the cheapest and simplest media available. Optical disks have good short-term reliability, but should not be counted on to store data for long periods of time. A standard CD-R holds 700-megabytes of data and a standard DVD-R holds 4.4-gigabytes of data.

I recommend: Purchase optical disks with speeds as high as the maximum speed of your business's optical drive for maximum efficiency. PC Mall Sales and SuperMediaStore.com offer a wide selection of optical media.

Use a primary long-term data storage media

Hard drives are the perfect data storage media to back-up all of your business's important files because of their large capacity and reliability. Hard drives come in capacities as large as 1-terabyte and, while they can fail after several years of use, they are by far the most reliable long-term data storage solution.

I recommend: Get an external USB hard drive to backup data on multiple computers. An external USB hard drive can be easily plugged in to many computers to accept data and then stored in a safe location such as a fire-proof safe. Buy.com and Iomega offer external hard drives.

Increase the security of your business's data storage media with online data storage

Optical data storage media is a good solution for short-term storage and hard drives are excellent for long-term storage, but, because any media can fail at any time, it is important to back-up important data in multiple ways. Online storage ensures data is safe even if your business experiences a media or equipment failure. It also ensures your business' data will be safe even in the event of a fire or natural disaster at your business's location.

I recommend: You can get free quotes from online data storage service providers in your area from BuyerZone.com. AmeriVault offers a free trial and demonstration of their online data storage services to business decision makers.

Tips & Tactics

Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide

• •  Consider dual layer DVD-R discs as your short-term data storage solution if your optical drive supports them. They offer twice the storage capacity of standard DVD-R data storage media.