The backup media is the actual physical storage used by the backup device to store the database, transaction log, or file backup. Backup media can be either disk or tape.
For example, a backup device might be the file C:\Backups\Accounting\Full.bak, whereas the backup medium is the disk containing the file. Similarly for tape, a backup device might be the \\.\TAPE0 tape device on the local computer, whereas the backup media are the physical tapes used to store the backup.
When creating a backup, Microsoft® SQL Server™ can do one of the following:
| BACKUP | Managing Backups |
| Understanding Media Sets and Families |