^ Me too. Originals on my hard drive (which get backed up to NAS twice a week with everything else using Norton Ghost), regular backup to an external drive, and archived to DVD once a year and stored offsite (at my parents' house) in case the house burns down and takes everything else with it.
Same as above... keep the RAW's back them up etc... also the Jpg's that i've actually used... everything else gets swept away periodically... of course I also keep all the jpgs from weddings as well, so I have less work to do should a bride come back and want more :)
I move all my original and edits to an external hard drive and keep them forever :)
diddo
I have many folders in my external hard drive.
2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and soon to be 2008
Each year has folders in them: clients, stock, my family, scrapbooking, monthly photos, dpc entries...and more. I have the months in each one of those folders. This way my photos are more organized and I can find them more easily.
I move mine to a 400gb external HD, and if they're important (any paid jobs), i put them on cdrs or dvdrs depending on the size of the pics. This also means you can simply duplicate a disc for repeat clients.
I have the raw file and the master edit (psd) on my hard drive. Once a week, I back everything on the hard drive up to an external drive and put it in my safe. The only jpegs I save are the print jpegs a client has ordered. I backup the raw files, psd's and jpegs for prints they ordered onto a CD, write the client's name and date on the cd, and file it. If they order anything later, it's easy to just grab the cd out of the book.
Prior to Mac OS 10.5 (leopard) I manually backed up RAW originals, TIFF edits as well as JPG web files to FW drives sorted by date (both capture and upload dates) and keywords. Now Time Machine does it automatically by the hour.
1) ALL images are burned to CD immediately after downloading from the card.
2) ALL images I work on are given their own unique folder. The RAW file is copied over and all subsequent work is done here.
3) These folders are in turn burned onto CD once a week if the file has been modified.
4) God help me if the database that tracks all this goes south. (It's backed up, too, on a 500 gb raid system that is burned off monthly.)
the RAWs are downloaded then sorted into good and bad. The good are burned to DVD. all are kept at this point on the HD.
at some point (usually once a year) i delete all the RAWs from finished projects and burn the JPGs and PSDs off to disk.
I convert the RAWs to JPG and those are almost never edited and saved over themselves. If it's a wedding the are at the proof stage now. If it's a portrait session then they are fully edited for the projection session, and many are saved as PSDs (if there is text on the image, a composite image or one that is saved in more than one version (B&W, color, etc)) These are in a directory called 'to show'
Any ordered files are put into a directory labeled as Ordered, and the name changed to reflect the order (F1 = 1 sheet wallets, I2 would be 2 5x7s, etc)
Any image edited and not ordered has an "e" in the front to identify it as an edited photo. "w" means web resolution. A "_" after the e or w means it's a artists favorite. makes finding my faves at the end of the year easier for folio updating.
Like most here I back up all (after weeding out obvious OOF and the like) RAW files to a remote HD. I also B/U jpgs originals if I shoot in that format. I also keep on my HD and B/U to a remote HD my edited TIFF files without sharpening.
Problem is I have been very lax about keywording and / or rating my files so it is a bitch to go back and find what I'm looking for. I file them by month and year and always keep the original number the camera created as the last part of the file name.
