What is the best way to save different versions of a project?

Question

I am working on a documentary with hundreds of hours of footage. I've been told that to avoid file corruption, I need to regularly save different version of the project. I've done some research and there appears to be different ways to do this.
In Lisa Brenneis's FCP book, she suggests using "Save As" to protect one's work (renaming the old copy with a version number, and using the same name for the most updated version). This makes sense to me, since this would avoid FCP creating new capture folders every time I change the name of my project. However, I'm wondering if there is a difference between doing Brenneis' technique or duplicating the project.
Are there different schools of thoughts on this? Does anyone have a system that works for them that they recommend? I've done research and I can't find anything on this topic, other than issues with backing up (I'm working with several hard drives - but what I'm most concerned about is avoiding file corruption and making sure my media isn't all over the place).
Thanks for sharing!

Answer 1

Good topic!
I use the technique of popping over to Finder and using command-D
to make a copy every once in a while. Then at the end of the day,
I'll make a copy of the session to another disk. Whenever I've done
a lot of work that I never want to lose, I take a copy to another location.
If a backup is super-important, be sure to test it!
It only takes a minute to quit FCP, and double-click on the backup.
When I return to work the next day, after making sure my project opens,
I delete all the "copy" files, then make a new one and the process repeats.
When I output the edit for others to work on or approve, I will make
a special copy of the project with the date encoded in the file name,
Japanese-style (e.g. MyProject_2009-01-22.fcp and RoughEdit_2009-01-22.mov),
then I never touch that file. Doing the dates Japanese-style means
that they will be organized chronologically in Finder.
Keeping these intermediate projects means that people can refer
to very specific times on specific versions, and I can find exactly
what they are talking about.
As far as media goes, most people do not back up tape,
because it's such a pain (you need two drives). People tend
to keep their tapes in a box somewhere. This can work OK
if you never use Capture Now.
Since capturing from tape is such a time-consumer,
and since I don't usually work with tape anyway,
I focus on good disk backup. Ideally I'll have a disk
and a backup at home, and a copy of the media files
at another location.
Be sure to keep the backups organized and named
carefully so you can FIND what you are looking for
if you need to. Adding a little text file in your folder
explaining stuff is not a bad idea.
People talk a lot about media failure, and yes all media
will fail someday, but I use backups mostly because
of my mistakes, like deleting the wrong file or something
stupid like that.
Be sure to back up all the other little files you might be
using in a project, like Filemaker databases, graphics files,
important emails, hours logs, etc.
It's good that you are thinking about this important topic.