Regardless of the repository model that is used, the data has to be stored on some data storage medium somewhere.

Magnetic tape

Magnetic tape has long been the most commonly used medium for bulk data storage, backup, archiving, and interchange. Tape has typically had an order of magnitude better capacity/price ratio when compared to hard disk, but recently the ratios for tape and hard disk have become a lot closer. There are myriad formats, many of which are proprietary or specific to certain markets like mainframes or a particular brand of personal computer. Tape is a sequential access medium, so even though access times may be poor, the rate of continuously writing or reading data can actually be very fast. Some new tape drives are even faster than modern hard disks.

Hard disk

The capacity/price ratio of hard disk has been rapidly improving for many years. This is making it more competitive with magnetic tape as a bulk storage medium. The main advantages of hard disk storage are low access times, availability, capacity and ease of use. External disks can be connected via local interfaces like SCSI, USB, FireWire, or eSATA, or via longer distance technologies like Ethernet, iSCSI, or Fibre Channel. Some disk-based backup systems, such as Virtual Tape Libraries, support data de-duplication which can dramatically reduce the amount of disk storage capacity consumed by daily and weekly backup data.

Optical disc

A recordable CD can be used as a backup device. One advantage of CDs is that they can be restored on any machine with a CD-ROM drive. In addition, recordable CD's are relatively cheap. Another common format is recordable DVD. Many optical disk formats are WORM type, which makes them useful for archival purposes since the data can't be changed. Other rewritable formats can also be utilized such as CD-RW or DVD-RAM. The newer HD-DVDs and Blu-ray Discs dramatically increase the amount of data possible on a single optical storage disk, though, as yet, the hardware may be cost prohibitive for many people.

Floppy disk

During the 1980s and early 1990s, many personal/home computer users associated backup mostly with copying floppy disks. The low data capacity of a floppy disk makes it an unpopular and obsolete choice today.

Solid state storage

Also known as flash memory, thumb drives, USB flash drives, CompactFlash, SmartMedia, Memory Stick, Secure Digital cards, etc., these devices are relatively costly for their low capacity, but offer excellent portability and ease-of-use.

Remote backup service

As broadband internet access becomes more widespread, remote backup services are gaining in popularity. Backing up via the internet to a remote location can protect against some worst-case scenarios such as fire, flood, earthquake or nuclear strike which would destroy any backups in the immediate vicinity along with everything else. A drawback to a remote backup service is that an internet connection is usually substantially slower than the speed of local data storage devices, so this can be a problem for people with large amounts of data. It also has the risk associated with putting control of personal or sensitive data in the hands of a third party.