I think the general consensus is that you should have at least one backup onsite, and one backup offsite.

The onsite backup will allow you to quickly recover from disaster (ie. minimal downtime). For example, with a RAID 1 configuration, it's as easy as replacing the defective hard drive with another one to stay covered (while still having the exact same data available).

The offsite backup protects you against risks that could adversely affect both your drives at the same time (eg. a fire, an earthquake, or even a town evacuation ensuing a local zombie apocalypse).

Of course, if you're really paranoid you may have even more onsite and/or offsite backups.

My backup strategy consists of copying the RAW files to multiple encrypted external drives and entrusting those drives to people scattered around the country. I use a Thermaltake BlacX external hard drive "toaster" to make the drive swapping easy.

RAID mirroring provides good protection against natural drive failures, but it can leave you vulnerable if there is a fire or severe power surge.

DVD-R backups are not exceptionally reliable due to the instabilities of the dyes on the discs. Few rigorous studies have investigated the topic, but the handful that are available suggest a high variance in quality among the disc manufacturers. In other words, your mileage may vary. I don't trust writable optical media for long-term backups.

All I am using at this point is an external 1TB hard drive. I need to look into finding on online host.

Recommendations?

First, I have a RAID 1 array in my computer so a hard drive failure won't be catastrophic. Of course, that doesn't help if I accidentally delete everything, so I also use a Drobo with Backup4All to do nightly incremental backups.

I haven't found a good way to do online photo backups, it just seems that it's too much data (since all my files are RAW) to upload to Mozy/Carbonite/Backblaze in any reasonable time frame. So for offsite backups, I have a small travel hard drive (you can find 500GB drives for about $90 on Amazon) that I copy all my photos to and then take with me to work or give to a friend in case something happens to my apartment.

I'd be interested to hear if anyone has a better solution for offsite backups.

Agreed. 1 onsite backup and 1 offsite backup.

I used to buy external enclosed hard drives like lacie and maxtor then do a complete backup using them, but that becomes expensive and space is always increasing.

A cheap solution, which I do right now is to buy a hard drive docking station for $30 via usb 2.0 and then purchase a cheap hard drive. I bought a terabyte for $60 this month! Around next year a 2 terabyte would cost around the same price instead of paying double or triple the amount for an enclosure storage.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817816009

I have a mac, so I use time machine for my backup. But lacie also has a great free backup utility.

http://www.lacie.com/silverkeeper/

Ideally, I'd like to buy a drobo, which IMO is the best solution. But it's also a bit expensive; not in the long run though.

For online backups I've found that crashplan is the best. http://www.crashplan.com I've done the research and they have really good reviews and beat mozy and backblaze.

• Primary store on external hard drive. Grab it on the way out if the house if burning! :)
• Weekly onsite backup to NAS, except I have now exceeded NAS capacity, so must replace, and really should do daily incrementals to the NAS instead of weekly.
• Monthly photo catalog backup to portable hard drive which is taken to the office. I really should do this weekly.

If this were my livelihood, I would certainly be more diligent.

I use a Bubba Two server on my local network. It allows me not only to back up my photos, but also access them from any machine on the network (and from from the outside, if you want to). The server runs an rsync script every hour that backs up the photos to the rsync.net service. You'll find a more detailed (and technical) description of my setup on my Productivity Sauce blog.

Check out symform.com, they have a great shared storage system, that can handle incremental backups with about as large a dataset as you like. And since hard drives are so cheap, it's very affordable.

Andrew Rodgers http://perfectedperspectives.com

I have a simple solution for the moment -- all photos on my computer, which is a laptop with a 500gb drive in it, and all of them on an external hard drive at another location, so I'm protected against my house being robbed or burning. I'd be screwed if:

1. There were a fire or robbery while I was visiting the other location
2. I lost my laptop drive and then the external drive also decided to fail

I used to also keep a second backup on a computer here at home, giving me three copies, but I stopped that.

For my external drive, I've been using Microsoft's SyncToy, which does a great job of "echo"ing pics from my laptop to the external drive, but not the other way.

For offsite backup, I've considered using Amazon's S3, but I'm approaching 200GB of photos, which would cost $30 per month. Maybe it's worth it, though. Another solution that's cheap is DreamHost. They give you 50gb of free backup space, and you're allowed to use it for anything, including photos. I can provide a link if the group wants one.

EDIT

Another solution that's interesting is Google Storage. It's become very cheap! The lowest tier is 20 GB for only $5 a year (that works out to only about 2.1 cents per GB per month). There are other plans you can see at Google's page. If you install Picasa, you can have it sync all your photos automatically. It seems that it will work with RAW files, and some limited video capability as well. And if you experience failure, you can just restore the files in their original hierarchy. I think it's a good deal. And there seems to be a promotion right now where you can get a free EyeFi card. Check out the page.

You are already getting some fantastic answer already, I just thought to emphasize how important it is to apply the acid test. Every once in a while force yourself to simulate what it would be like if data was actually destroyed on your working copy. Try to call into action the business continuity plan you have in place and see how things go. Score yourself, especially over several such tests to see if there's anything missing in your plan.