I just deleted a really long and rambling post about this, which is a topic near and dear to my heart. Unfortunately, it's just too long and involved for me to spend the time to really cover it in the detail I'd like to. However, here's the bottom line:
1) Decide what is important. I have 60GB of music and 133 GB of vids on my computer. Do I reallycare about most of that stuff? No. I still have the CDs for most of the music, and DVDs for the vids. If I somehow lose them, the data can ultimately be recreated. However that is not the case with my financial documents, some email, and other miscellaneous data. However, even all of that stuff added together is not more than will fit on a DVD. It would actually take less than a CD, but I have a fair amount of stuff that I spent a lot of time to create, that I couldconcievably redo, but do not want to.
2) Once you've decided what is important, copy it to the media of your choice. (I like DVDs, as I suspect DVD readers will be around in one format or another for some time in the future.) Make another copy. Make another copy. You might want to use a USB stick. Those work great as well, and seem to be pretty stable for long term storage.
3) Put 2 copies in a safe deposit box, or at a relative's house. A safe deposit box is better, because climate control actually makes media last a lot longer than it otherwise would.
4) On a regular basis, make a new/updated copy and repeat steps 2 and 3 above. How often you do this will be determined how important the data is, and how often it changes. YMMV, but quarterly is probably a working minimum for most people.
5) Use an external hard drive to back up everything on your computer. If you're using a MAC. Use "time machine". It rocks. Probably the best personal backup software there is IMO. Buy another drive and swap the two occasionally. Perhaps keep the swapped drive off site (like in your deposit box). If you're using MS-Windows, i don't really know what is best for backup software, but you need to use something that you know you can restore from if you upgrade your computer. If you're using Linux (my preferred OS), I like "BackInTime" because it is almost identical in operation to Time Machine on a Mac.
6) Think about your data and what format it is in. If you are using a financial program to keep track of budget stuff, export a snapshot of your data to the QIF format reguarly. QIF is an extraordinarly well documented file format. It is quite likely that 20 years from now whatever financial program you are using will read and understand it. If you're smart you'll think about other document formats as well. A file created with MS-Word 1.0 is of very little use to you today if you do not have a copy of Open Office, which I believe is the only major program out there that can still read it. Modern versions of word will not. I recommend that folks convert their documents to an Open Document Format (ODF) if they can, such as that used by OpenOIffice. By this, I mean actual Open documents, not the pseudo-open formats that microsoft uses because ODF is well documented and MS formats despite protestations to the contrary, simply are not. 20 years from now, you're much more likely to be able to read an ODF document than you will some proprietary document by any vendor. This is of course my own personal opinion and others may disagree (YMMV).
If you are worried about things like image formats and that kind of stuff, you'll also have to keep up with what is going on in that space. Personally, I think you'll be OK for quite some time if your pictures are JPEGs or TIFFs. I'd be less confident in raw images from a camera. If you have all your data in JPG format, and it looks like that is going away, then you'd be smart to convert to whatever newer format is being most commonly used. Keep in mind that JPG is a lossy format (as is MP3). Each time you convert from one lossy format to another you lose some clarity. That's just the way of life. If you really care about fidelity, stick with lossless formats like FLAC for audio and, TIFF or (horror) BMP, for pictures. I am unaware of a lossless video codec. Speaking of Vids. If you have stuff on VHS that you must save and can't repurchase in a digital format, you'd best get on that now. You can do it yourself with the right hardware (your video card) and programs, or you can pay someone else to do it for you. (same goes for 8MM film)
Yeah, it looks like I went on a bit again, but you should have seen what I already deleted.
Thanks.
I have concluded that maybe just sending some of the best(most important) pictures over to get printed the old fashioned way would be wise as well.
We all have old pictures around that are 50 and 60 years and have stood the test of time.
Me too. I am a service tech, and this is ultimately the primary concern wrt my clients. Your suggestions are really good, but we are quickly moving into a new arena - Data is getting way too big to back up manually. You and I might, but the average joe just isn't going to take the time...
Thus I rise with another suggestion to add to your list: Most folks have more than one computer in the house nowadays - Backing one to the other is a very viable alternative... I use Microsoft SyncToy to synchronize my live files (normally in my laptop) to my desktop server. If my laptop goes down, I can simply switch operations to the desktop and function relatively normally, with all of my data in place.
And better yet, better than everything, is NAS (Network Attached Storage) - I will explain it a bit for those without knowledge: NAS is like an USB external drive, except that it isn't USB - It is Network instead. You would plug it into your router, and there it sits, always on, always ready. This is an extraordinarily handy thing, because backup routines can be completely automated, and data centralized. I don't use them myself, but I have the luxury of having a data server and media server always on in my house, so I have automated routines to back to both... But a NAS provides the same functionality at a considerable savings. I would estimate that at least 70% of my SOHO clients now have a NAS based backup system in place.
Now, that doesn't relieve the client of the responsibility of manual backups now and then - And I still think one should back manually to USB (and then unattached) now and then, and perhaps ultra-critical data backed to a thumb daily, But I am sure you will agree that replication is key - Storage is cheap, and the more copies you have, and the more places you can put it, the safer you are... and the more backup chains (the way one creates backups), the more likely that one of the processes will have your data backup successfully completed and/or preserved. And the automated route supposes that something will indeed be backed up (something not so likely with your average Joe manual backup) So in the big data sense, that NAS can very easily and automatically be made to back up everything, and that is worthy of consideration.