What I’ve settled on now is two external USB hard-disks. One large capacity one and the other cheapest price/storage ratio at the time.

I upload photos to my laptop HD and to the cheap HD. The large capacity HD is a backup of my laptop disk (I use SuperDuper). As the cheap drive fills up I can mail it back and get a new one. If the laptop drive fills up then I archive all the photo’s off onto a HD and send that back as well (safety backup) and clean out the old stuff from the laptop to free up room.

If one of the drives crashes I always have a backup HD to restore from, also sending the cheap HD back periodically I can check to make sure they arrive and make a new copy if there is any problems (there hasn’t ever been so far). This is not fool-proof as you could loose some recent photo’s if your bags are stolen.

I like the idea of online backup but have found internet connections while traveling just too problematic (slow speeds, disconnects, spotty connections), especially since I also work with RAW. I’ve had a bit better success zipping all the files into several larger files for upload (works a bit faster then doing the individual files) but due to disconnects you can’t make the files too large.

I’ve also had some success planning my travel around “hub-cities” that have very good internet connection. So travel for a bit in third-world and then schedule in a major city (Bangkok, Singapore, etc..) where you can get good internet connection and spend a couple days doing all the backup from there.

Future-Wise the SanDisk write-once memory format might actually be viable (http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/20/1gb-write-once-sandisk-memory-cards-to-cost-5-99/). But it is still costly.

So better keep em’ RAW.

I’d seriously think about just sending everything back via postal. But look at using CF cards instead of USB drives. Drives are heavier, more expensive to ship and prone to mechanical failure (I have a brand new external drive sitting on my desk and it started dying almost out of the box). CF cards are more expensive but my hunch is that you’ll save money in the long term.

Also, you can look into replacing your macbook/ibook with a model with a dual layer burner. Gives you 8 gigs a disc and it’ll burn them faster. Once they’re in the states though, they need to be backed up to a reliable system because optical media really isn’t idea for archival.

The only place where RAW/JPEG file size would matter to me in on the camera, and I have enough memory I carry with me to take over 300+ RAW photos before I have to save the files.

Even if Flickr did store RAW files, I only upload about 10% of what I shoot to Flickr.

I’ve gone with RAW this far so I’m going to stick with it. I’ve been getting more requests to use my photos in books/magazines, and I eventually want to sell prints. I think the extra headache will pay off in the long run.

1) RAW photos are exceptionally large, and if you switched to high quality JPEG you’d be able to take three times the photos in a smaller space.
2) Flickr stores almost all other formats, so if you had a pro account you could use Flickr as a form of backup.
3) Your photography is great so far, and after a year of practice you probably don’t need the insurance that you can fix any of your mistakes. Half of photography is taking mediocre pictures anyway.
4) RAW files require not only more space, but more work if you want to have them viewable or printable or sendable anyway since you have to composite them.

So although the portable HD sounds like the best option right now, it seems to me that it’s indicative of a larger problem. I’d start switching to JPEG (except for weird lighting conditions) and use Flickr as a backup.

DVD backups aren’t really safe and sometimes they get damaged or warped when shipping no matter how secure you pack them.

You can also consider getting a dedicated box or like what katty just said; amazon S3 and Transmit.

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