Dan,

>When I ran my backup software to restore all my data, I found out that the new version did not use the same file formats and could not read tapes made with previous versions!

I once had to help a new client in trying to recover data from their backup tapes. They had religiously followed a strict backup procedure for years, obviously on the same 7 or 8 tapes, which were completely worn out and unreadable.

No one had ever checked the backup system's error logs, and they did not have any kind of verification of the backup turned on in the backup system options.

Needless to say, it was complete disaster!

The sad thing is that there are thousands of small businesses in the same situation today, thinking that they are covered, but without having ever tried to restore a tape for testing purposes.