Journal: Best Way to Back Up Photos and Video?

Thanks for all the great replies everyone. I suppose I should have mentioned that we are fairly small time (working completly from home with this stuff) and don't have the money for the more exotic solutions out there, but thank you none the less.

After reading several hundred responses it looks like I'll be going with a plan like this:

- Duplicate DV tapes, store one copy in safe deposit box. Save project files to 2 different-brand (different media compositions are likely to have different lifespans) CDs and store with tapes.
- RAID (1 or 5) for online storage, daily incremental (weekly full) backup to non-RAID (or RAID-0 or JBOD) on second server (or external drive enclosure) for short-term deletion/corruption protection.
- Monthly backup of photos to 2 different-brand CDs or DVDs (as size dictates) with index images (contact sheet style) on DVD and cumulative indices on CD (keep on HD as well for quick reference) then store in safe deposit box. Remove backed up folders from daily HD backup.
- Backup critical non-images to 2 different-brand CDs or DVDs (as size dictates) and store in safe deposit box.
* Use PAR2 for parity on all burned files and create MD5 sums for future data integrity checks.
* Store optical discs vertically wrapped in paper to prevent light exposure in airtight (ziplock) bags with silica gel packets.
* Verify optical backups (using previously created MD5 sums) every 6 months after creation.

It's not a perfect plan, but it greatly reduces the chance of me loosing important data and shouldn't be prohibitivly expensive.