"Stan Brown" wrote

| There's always safety deposit boxes, though they're not close by and
| there's a cost. But since I have a detached garage, I wondered about
| just storing the "off site" drive in the garage. The garage isn't
| climate controlled, so the drive would be out of the weather but
| subject to temperature fluctuations from 0°F to the 90s -- probably
| not in the same day. :-)
|
| Any likelihood that would cause problems? I know of course to let the
| drive come to indoor temperature before using it.
|

Yes. It doesn't hurt to have yet another backup,
but if you really care then why are you skimping?

I pay about $70/year for a safe deposit box. I
keep disk images and data there, on DVDs, as well
as legal papers. It's not an expensive option. I also
keep recent data backups in my truck, which is
similar to your garage option. But those are DVDs
and they get swapped out regularly, so I don't have
to worry about damage from cold/heat/damp.

But it also depends on how important the data
is to you. Most people I know don't really care if their
computer goes down. The only "data" they have is
stored on gmail. Most people still don't use computers
to do their taxes, edit photos, write documents, etc.
The last time I had to fix someone's computer, she
was only worried about the pictures of her grandkids.
"Where are they?", I asked. "In my email." I knew
by that that she was talking about her gmail account.
She'd never even saved out copies of the photos to her
computer!