[Publius6961]

The files are so big, however, that I have to cut them back a bit in photoshop. they are almost 50 megs before trimming them down.

There's something to be said for preserving every bit of resolution from film.
With recordable DVDs now, a low end DVD disk is good for 80 full-size images. A good option for those must-save shots....

[js1138]

Believe it or not, 80 images per DVD is not sustainable for anyone who takes a lot of pictures. Recordable optical media has an uncertain shelf life. I have three year old CDs that are unreadable.

I'm going with external hard drives, at least two of everything.

I have so many accumulate family pictures, about 15,000 now from several generations. I have sixty years of my father's pictures, a bunch of my father-in-law's, My kids' pictures, plus mine.

I would rather have good hi-res jpegs that I can keep multiple copies of than perfect ones I can't keep backups of.