• USB Thumbdrive -- The two biggest strengths of using a small USB key to store backups are their ease of use and portability. Unfortunately, they are easily lost, exposing your data to whomever finds it, and this isn't a solution that is scalable -- as your needs grow, having a stack of unlabeled USB drives becomes quite unwieldy.

• Physical Copy -- There are still some companies that print reams and reams of data, to keep safely offsite as their backup. While such a solution is costly and time-intensive, let alone space-intensive, and difficult to quickly recover data from, it surely provides protection against all manner of computer software or hardware failure. Provided, of course, that your printer doesn't die from exhaustion.

• Offsite Backup -- Either via a physical disk or by sending your data to a remote site, having an offsite solution provides security against physical trauma to your building; a fire at your office will not get your data, but the tradeoff is paying someone remotely to host/keep your data, and the fact that recovery takes time, be it travel time for the physical drives or transfer time over the internet. This is always a good secondary backup policy, as a "just in case" measure.

• Tape Backup -- Most large corporations still maintain a large tape library for backups, with good reasons for it -- tapes are reliable, easy to use, and the software that controls the backups is well-developed and very powerful. Unfortunately, the initial cost for a tape backup system is rather significant, and may be prohibitive for smaller operations. Even with the cost, however, having tapes is all but an industry standard.

• RAID -- Modern computers have the ability to mirror data between two drives, to protect against physical damage. All machines wear out, and if a drive dies, it is a very expensive endeavor to recover that information. By having twin disks working in parallel however, a single disk failing is no great detriment. However, I would not call this a true "backup solution" because if a file is deleted, it is removed from both drives. A staple in any modern server for its reliability and efficiency, this should be used in conjunction with one or more of the above systems.