Backup media is evolving from being tape-based to being disk-based -- including removable disk drives. Removable hard disk drive products like the Quantum Corp.'s GoVault, Iomega Corp.'s Rev 70 or Imation Corp.'s Odyssey combine the portability of tape with performance of magnetic disk drives for fast restores.

To protect his company's business of producing karate-teaching videos, Joel Ertl of E/B Productions is using disk-to-disk backups. Ertl is also an early user of Imation's new portable removable Odyssey removable disk drive. When Ertl shoots a video, the result is 10GB to 13GB of data per hour that needs to be protected and archived for future editing. For Ertl, CDs don't have enough capacity, and magnetic tapes are too slow and lack immediate sharing capability for his applications and environment. Given effective pricing, Ertl sees removable HDD as having a bright future for data protection, including backups or archiving in the absence of a network backup service.

Some data backup questions to consider include:

-- If using a managed service provider for remote backup, what is your available network bandwidth?