My Backups are Using Too Many Disks! (Condensing Data)

Question:

How can I limit my number of disks needed for daily back ups. I started with one and now I am up six. What is the procedure? Or should I just keep adding disks?

Answer:

Here are a few suggestions to your problem:

• You can condense your data. If you have many years of transactions in your company file, then you can remove those transactions...leaving only the general ledger entries. The downside to this is that if you want to go back and see a check on your screen you will not be able to. I would keep at least 5 - 7 years of your data uncompressed. Personally I would not go this route, but I wanted to let you know it is available. How ever I not sure exactly how great the disk space savings would be.
• Do your backups on a CD. CD-RW drives are very reasonable now...I think this would be a good investment. Below is a link to a good one from amazon.com.
• Consider an online backup service. This will do two things. 1. You don't have to worry about the size as long as it fits in the size constraints of the service you are using...which is pretty big. 2. Your data will be stored off site. In the event of a disaster your data would be safe. Intuit offers one designed for QuickBooks, and there are others out there as well.