What is the Best Storage Solution?

Question

I have a laptop and an external drive E (where I store all my photos 9000plus). I would like some suggestions on the best (most reliable and long term) storage solutions. I was burning them on CD as well but now I have a Canon EOS Rebel GT (pictures are much larger files) I dont get many on a CD. I was wondering if I should get a DVD burner. I thought they probablly store a lot more pictures?? Wondering how many more?
Also, do I save all my tagged & edited pictures seperately from my originals (have two sets of photos)? And if so on the hard drive or on CD/DVD? Then I assume if I backup my catalogue when I get a new computer all I need to do is restore and everything is there?
Finally, any good stragegies on deleting pictures. I have 3 kids and have such a hard time deleting their photos. The obvious poor ones no problem but when I take rapid shot pictures they all seem so good. At this rate I will need to buy a bigger house to store all the hard drives and back up disks :)
Would love to hear what works well for you!
Thanks,
julie

Answer 1

The original poster asked the question whether or not to have two sets of photos (originals and edited).
What do most people do as far as this is concerned?
Do you include your original files in your Organizer catalogue or not?
The "workflow" that I have finished up with is this:
At the end of each day, I transfer all my camera shots into a folder such as C:\Negs\2006\0605\2006_0521Flowers ("Negs" because I think of them as equivalent to "negatives")
I do not use PSE4 downloader but use Fuji FinePixViewer simply because it came with my first camera and I have just continued with it. It makes it easy to rename the files to things like 0605210001.jpg (last 4 digits sequential for each date). I have tried descriptive file names but found them too difficult.
The word tacked onto the sub-folder name is a reminder of the general nature of the subject matter. I do not worry if there are a few shots that do not really belong but if there are a significant number of shots of totally unrelated subjects, I can cheat and artificially split the sub-folder in two. (The descriptive part of the folder name is pretty much redundant because of PSE4's tagging ability, it is really a carry-over from the Fuji program.)
I then go through and delete any completely useless shots.
I then copy and paste the sub-folder into a another folder named C:\Photos" which contains an identical sub-folder tree.
C:\Photos is watched by PSE4 so whatever is in it is automatically included in my catalogue.
I then go through and do my tagging.
I do my editing in the C:\Photos folder and save processed files in their original sub-folder but append _E to the file name to indicate that it has been edited. (I have a few other suffixes like _W for web images, _Q for max quality for large prints)
If I am not entirely satisified with my editing and think that maybe in a few days time I might be able to do a little better, I save my processed file as psd. Otherwise I flatten it and delete the un-edited version. (A copy of the original still being available in C:\Negs if required.)
Am I unusual in keeping my original shots outside Organizer? - my reason for doing it this way was to keep my Catalogue down to a manageable size.
As far as backing up is concerned, I have a comprehensive system that involves daily backups from C to D (a second internal drive) and monthly backups to external USB drives (used in rotation and kept off site).