The Backup reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Apr-2004 (provided by Fixed Reference: snapshots of Wikipedia from wikipedia.org)

Backup

Backup in computer engineering refers to the copying of data for the purpose of having a second copy of an original source, in case of damage to the original data source. The "data" in question may be either data as such, or stored program code, both of which are treated the same by the backup software.

The word may be used as a noun, e.g., "have you remembered to move the backup to a safe place?", or as a verb, "he didn't back up the data, so we lost last week's work". Also common are various combinations, such as backup copy, backup software (the applications that are used for performing the backing up of data, i.e., the systematic generation of backup copies), backup policy (an organisation's procedures and rules for ensuring that adequate amounts and types of backups are made, including suitably frequent testing of the process for restoring the original (production) system from the backup copies).

As of 2004, backups are most often made from hard disk based production systems to large capacity magnetic tape storage, or optical disk media like CD-R and DVD-R and similar formats. During the period 1975–1995, most office/personal/home computer users associated backup mostly with copying floppy disks.

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