back ups

Greetings,

My "best way" to backup is a different option than the two you mentioned - hard drive(s).

My "backups" are on hard drives. That makes it easier to do either individual file or large scale restores.

My "archives" are on CDRs. That media is more "stable", and provides a safer, longer term archive (shelf life).

That's my opinion.

Regards,

Maxwell

I believe the short answer is tape. Why? Because that's what more that 90% of It departments use. the reason they use tape is the industry built around tape backups. It's hard to say what solution is right for your situation, but companies like Veritas have developed a wide range of backups solutions using tape. I'm not aware of any that use CDRW. That doesn't mean you can't use it, I just don't know of anyone that does. Remember, a network backup is primarily for disaster recovery. You need tohave a backup of your network offsite at all times. Sadly, the events in New York show how much that's needed. If you looking at something besides disaster recovery, like long term document storage, a cd system is ideal.
Hope that helps.