Read about  storage and lifetimes of CD and DVD media here;

http://www.itl.nist.gov/div895/carefordisc/CDandDVDCareandHandlingGuide.pdf

I'm in PC tech support and I've been watching reports of failures in
external hard disk backpack devices.

IMO the no-name stuff isn't ready for my data.

NTFS file systems are still closed to Microsoft.  The Linux folks have
been trying to develip a full function NTFS driver and say they can't
until MS documents some of it's internals.  Until then, Read-write
drivers for NTFS are not complete.  Very large disks formatted with
NTFS in backpackes are IMO unusually risky hased on the failure
reports I see.  Having a disk on a seperate power line also leaves you
open for power glitches that corrupt data.

If you have a name-brand backpack like Maxtor you're better off but I
would never make a backpack device the sole repository of important
files.

Per the NIST document, CDRs *can* be very reliable.  That document is
2 years old and at the time there was still lots of change in the DVD
catagory but the handling instructions are good.  

CD/DVD media has the advantage of being cheap and you can make several
copies and keep them at multiple locations.

I've been doing buisness continuity planning and data center
operation management  for 30 years. Maybe I'm just an old phart.

My $0.02.

Jasen probably trolls:

A few moments at google reveals vast tracts of commentary, review, etc
on this subject.  Try the query:

"storage device" photos

on google groups.  Note that there is nothing special about photos --
many other areas (audio, video, literature) are experiencing ballooning
demands of storage (short and long term), and any solution for them is
just as good as for images.  Bits are bits.

Basically, there isn't much more one can add to this well-trodden
subject, beyond, say, new product announcements.  But those usually
appear, and are archived at, the Usual Websites.

Sooner or later they will fail ... I've seen up to 10 years MTBE data
for Seagate external drives but they could fail in 6 months too,
especially if you're traveling and they are subject to excess shock or
moisture (or theft).

For most of my trips I take a laptop computer and a 2nd portable disk
with a card reader built in, like the Nixvue or Wolverine.  I download
images to the laptop, make a quick edit to cull out what I can safely
cull, and write from the laptop to the 2nd disk.  Then and only then
will I clear my CF cards.  I can do this with a 2 GB card (~250 images)
in about 15-20 minutes, depending on how long I take editing.

I try to keep the computer and the disk in separate places, for example
the disk in the car or my photo jacket and the laptop in the hotel
room, so if one is stolen I still have backup.  Some guys I am friends
with take a small 2nd disk without the card reader, which is lighter
and cheaper, but then they are screwed if something goes wrong with the
laptop (usually a busted screen when it's dropped, from what I've seen
thus far) while I can at least download the cards to my disks.

If I can't take a laptop (like on a recent camping trip to Alaska) I
take two portable drives, right now a 60 GB Nixvue and a 100 GB
Wolverine, and copy to both drives before clearing the card.  I'm
getting an Epson P-4000 soon (80 GB version of the P-2000), which will
let me look at the images without a computer.  I know all these devices
will fail one day (especially with the rigors of travel) but the odds
are very low that two of them will fail on the same trip.

Neither ... I use external USB or 1394 hard drives (5 at the moment),
you can get a 250 GB external for $125 on sale ... I keep one at home
and one in storage and rotate them every time I do a big shoot,
updating the RAW archives.  Again, I know they will fail eventually but
odds are astronomical they'll both fail at the same time.  By the time
one fails you'll find new ones with 4x the capacity at 1/4th the price

Bill

Per Jasen:

So far, I've toasted two iPods - so I wouldn't consider iPod a reliable medium
for storage.

I back up onto four USB-2 hard drives: one permanently attached to the sys, one
that I occasionally do a full backup to and keep in a closet, and two that are
designed tb portable that I alternate - shuttling them between home and work.

Now that I've broken down and bought a DVD drive, I'll probably do annual or
semiannual full backups to DVD and store those at a neighbor or relative's
house.

Well, you could just buy lots of cards.  At current prices, storing the
data on cards is cheaper than  buying 35mm film....

I use an X'S Drive II with a 20GB drive and I haven't had any problems
with it, except that it takes ages (around 15 minutes) to copy the
images off my 1GB card when it's full, but I think that's mostly because
the card itself is fairly slow.

There are situations where it would be really handy to be able to review
the images on the drive, but I've learned to work around that
limitation. I've started clearing the cards now as soon as I've backed
them up, because it's very easy to lose track of which cards have been
backed up and which haven't.

It's best to write your camera photos to two disks as one disk could
get damaged. Use a good brand of disk. You might want to use a
different brand of disk for the second disk.
If you take a lot of photos and the file size of each photo is large
then writing to DVD is best else write to CD.
Every year you could create a DVD with a years worth of your best
photos.

Regards Brian

Probably not as reliable as CF cards. Digital workflow is covered in a
lot of other posts and in plenty of books. The important thing is to
have a consistent approach that protects your data. Briefly, I work as
follows:

1. Carry enough CF cards with me to take the pictures. For me, I can
get about 100 images on a 2GB card.
2. Copy the contents of the CF card to my computer.
3. Delete any obviously useless shots.
4. Sort the images into CD-sized directories.
5. Burn the unaltered files from my camera onto CDs.
6. Back up from my hard drive to an external USB drive.
7. At that point, I will reformat the CF cards.

I keep copies of the images I really like (and my working copies) on
my PCs hard drive. I back up these working copies to an external hard
drive. My guiding principle is to always have at least 2 copies of any
data that I care about.

Leonard