You can never have too many back ups.
The best solution is both hard drive, CD/DVD, and hard drive in a different location. I currently have approximately 175 Gigs of files that I sell and need on a regular basis. Once a year I create complete backups on five different external hard drives. Three remain in my office for instant access to fill print orders. I keep them unplugged except when I need to access the files. One goes into the safety deposit box in my bank and the other goes to a friends house 300 miles away. Over Thanksgiving Costco had 320 Gig Western Digital Passport drives on sale for $90. I bought three. Two for my backups and the third to connect to my main computer to back up client files every few days. I also purchased a one terrabyte mirror drive for all my old digital camera files that I previously had on five different drives. I've kept the old drives in the event that this new drive fails. You can never have too many backups, and assume all hard drives will fail at some point in the future. To extend their life, keep all backup hard drives turned off until they are needed. If my house burned down tomorrow, my business would be up and running in a few days.

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Could someone suggest a good back up method for photo files? I have a portable hard drive and I can burn DVD's. Is there any one method that's best or a combination of the two, or some other methods. Thanks for any help.

Being somewhat paranoid, I use a combination of backup methods. The only files I keep on my PC's hard drive are the ones I'm actually working on. All the other files are on an external hard drive (Maxtor), and those files, if there are any changes, get backed up weekly on a second external HD. About once a quarter, everything on HD #2 gets backed up on, yep, yet another external HD. (Did I mention I'm somewhat paranoid?) And then, at the end of the year, all the files get burned to DVDs.

All the HDs are off line (no power) most of the time, except when I'm actually using them. I keep the DVDs in another part of the house, and I really should do the same with at least one of the HDs, but haven't yet. Ideally, all backed up files should be stored somewhere away from the house altogether, possibly in a safe deposit box in a bank. I'm working on that one.

Other options: A second internal HD for your PC or Mac. Or, one of the off-site data backup services available on the internet by subscription.

I am not as paranoid as Larry and Bill but do take what I consider prudent caution. When I began doing photography digitally 20 years ago very large external hard drives were very expensive and not all that reliable unless configured as a RAID system - and never could justify that cost. So I make gold/gold CD's to store my image files. I have checked out DVD's but they can't be coated with a micro layer of gold but only on one side, and are not nearly as much protection, and DVD's are a much finer recording and more easily damaged and made unaccessible because it is much more information put on the same size disc. I don't find having many more CD's a problem for storage and organization, as there are cabinets made for that. And Gold/Gold CD's are now less than a $1.00 each wholesale purchased at quantities above 100 at a time. I have some now that were gold/gold discs made by Kodak that are 20 years old and every one is fully accessible from the very first.

I now also have an external drive on each of my Macs and Apple's Time Machine automatically backs my systems up to the external drive continuously any time the computer is booted up.

Thanks for all the info. Another question. Should I copy the files I want to backup or should in use the the backup program in PSE 6.0 or use some other backup program to do the backups?

If you have a program that recognizes what's new since the last backup, use it. But also plan on a periodic global backup.

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Thanks for all the info. Another question. Should I copy the files I want to backup or should in use the the backup program in PSE 6.0 or use some other backup program to do the backups?

Just out of curiosity, Do you know if any testing has been done on the archival quality of blu ray discs vs. DVDs? I guess it's academic at this point, since (as far as I know) no new computers are coming out with blu ray burners yet.

Bill,

To be candid I have not taken a great interest in BluRay as it is so dedicated to HD movie recording, and I am too cheap to pay the extra tab of HD although I have an LCD TV that supports it. The last news I just glanced at is that BluRay is not doing all that ell in the marketplace, it seems the only serious enthusiasts are those who watch sports on a TV screen.