I have to disagree with everyone who is suggesting shipping physical copies offsite. They have the right idea -- a fireproof safe is about as failure prone of a strategy as there is, but I disagree with the premise that physical copies offsite is a better idea than using 'the cloud'. Offsite security isn't 100% unless it's a bank (and even then, it's like 99.999%), it's hard to keep up to date without a non-trivial time investment (will you go run a new copy to the bank every day?), it's error prone (did you remember to copy ALL the files), and it's prone to corruption (are today's DVD-R didn't have a burn defect?). Instead, I'd suggest something like this: 1) Use a cloud backup service, like Crashplan. Crashplan lets you encrypt your stuff before it's sent to their servers. They don't know the password -- that's on you. Several platforms work this way; Crashplan is just an example. 2) Put your files in an encrypted container -- something a TrueCrypt container. Save all your files in there. Have your backup service (ex- Crashplan) backup the encrypted container (don't directly backup the files within it). The initial upload of the container may take hours (maybe even days) for 5gb, but only incremental differences will be uploaded after that. Tell Crashplan to scan the file nightly for changes -- don't have it scan in 'real-time'. Now you have a backup platform that is encrypted twice, backed up offsite, and is kept up-to-date, and is relatively immune to corruption. You could layer on more security & encrypt the files within the TrueCrypt container (ex- NTFS EFS encryption). If this isn't enough for your security needs, then you better be storing some file about the JFK assassination on your computer.