While I am more than willing to grant that tapes are a LOT more durable than 
powered-down IDE drives, I'd still tend to frown on people tossing backups of 
critical information across the room.

Before I decided to go with a DDS-3 system, I looked long and hard at going the 
backup-to-disk path.  What finally sold me was the fact that DDS-3 tapes can be 
had for ~$5/ea if you know where to look. (and buy by the box)

I don't have much data to back up (probably less than 50GB atm) and spreading a 
full backup across 5 tapes appeals to me.

A number of companies make removable hard-drive racks with IDE-to-USB2.0 
bridges 
built-in.  One example is http://www.enhance-tech.com/products/ER4610UA.html .
(NOTE: no affiliation.  That's just the first example I stumbled across via a 
quick google.  There's also people selling similar systems on Ebay)

If your backup system supports USB, you can insert the drive while your system 
is running, turn the drive on (via the key), mount it, do your backup, unmount 
the drive, turn it off, and then remove it and put it in storage.

>Whenever someone at work criticizes me for spending money on LTO tapes
>when IDE drives are "cheaper", I just do the following:
>
>    - Go grab a chip database archive tape off the shelf in the
>      computer room.
>
>    - Walk in their office, toss the tape across the office, they
>      catch it (or not!), I ask them to toss it back, then I drop
>      the tape on their desktop from a half-meter up.
>
>    - Then I ask them if I can grab the hard disk out of their
>      desk top computer and do the same schtick.  No takers yet.
>
>This kind of (reletive) robustness is an admirable quality for media
>that are going to be transported back and forth from off-site storage.
>
>I'm very glad cheap IDE disks are available to use for holdingdisk,
>though!  That's a very good thing.
>