Backup Philosophy: DVD's & HDD's?

[Gerco]

I have 3 external terabyte drives currently... 2 of which are mirrored, the 3rd is a backup for my other 3 computers., I also have an external drive that equals the size of the drive in any one of my machines, which is mirrored to the parent computer and bootable. (Just in case the internal drive fails, I'm still ready to go with a reboot).

I currently have about 400 Mini DV tapes of original content, and I'm working on duping them all. I would love to get a huge SANS.. but still out of my price range.

Pictures are saved on one of the mirrored external drives, and also dumped to dual layer DVD's.

I'm totally paranoid when it comes to backup..

[Hell Puppy]

You're on the right path already, multiple copies of everything in different locations. Myself, I usually have a live copy (hard drive) and archival copy (CD or DVD) on site, plus backups on remote server, at business partner's house and for important stuff in a safety deposit box.

The question I guess here is format. DVD's are good for archival where speed doesn't really matter. But hard drives are very very cheap at this point. Mirror the hard drive to another hard drive and use the drive itself as a backup.

For keeping your live storage safe, I love the Drobo. Gives you all of the protection of a true SAN without the admin hassles. What it doesn't protect you against is losing the location due to fire, theft, etc, so you still need an offsite solution. With prices falling, the drobo itself can actually be transplanted periodically.