I back up to DVD once a month. I drop my zipped downloaded files into a 'burn' folder after unzipping them to my 'untagged' file or wherever they may belong in the case of music or program stuff. My photos are sorted by month rather than subject.
At the end of the month I sort through My Documents, My Received & My Music folders by date & burn a DVD with everything in those folders for that month, everything in the 'burn' folder, and everything in that months My Pictures subfolder. If there is still space on the DVD, and there usually is a decent amount unless I buy a lot of audiobooks that month, I put the previous months photos & music on the DVD as well until it is full. Once a quarter I wipe my backup EHD and back up onto it my HD and my main EHD (which holds my digi & audio stuff). Then I go through & delete 3 months of zips & other things I no longer need to keep.
Occasionally I make a copy of my photos, starting from most recent & back to as far as I can get on one DVD and send that to my folks. Everything else I am, to a certain extent, willing to deal with the loss of due to fire, theft, etc. But I do try to keep a copy of the photos in another physical location.
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