I have a USB drive, this will be in addition to and not replacing the USB backups so I will have two different types of media.

$140 for 320GB external WD hard drive. Not to bad and smal enough for a backacpk to take with you when you travel or to grab when running out of burning house or emergancy grab and go.
I work on my PC for a living so I need a lot of stuff backed up taht's why I do multi-HD on site, dvd offsite, and multi-hd(raid) offsite(backup online to my server).

I don't really see the "need" to carry a USB drive daily with schedules etc. I have a Motoroal Q which I can do that on and access the itnernet on too.. (also plug into laptop and get internet).
My Q can also take memory cards and store/access stuff on it too.

I access my home PC through remote desktop to check e-mail, access files etc. I almost have a 1mbit upload from home so it's almost like im sitting there!

-Todd

This is my plan:

1. Weekly backup to two firewire drives, one at home and another in a safe deposit box.
2. Daily backup to USB flash drive.

One completely free option is to have your data backed up online at, for example, http://xdrive.com/.
They offer 5gigs for free.

Personally, for storing pictures I only use CD-R meant for archival such as Verbatim, it says "Archival life up to 100 years" on the box. You could store them in acid-free archival storage boxes and folders if you're really serious. I wouldn't trust towels of DVDs that they sell for a couple of cents for each. But it's true that for me family pictures are not that important, I don't have to back up 9 GB of pictures.

I also have a Sandisk USB flash drive. I would stay away from U3 technology.

BTW I found this: archivalsuppliers.com

Frankie

I use cds, paper and usbs, most in a fireproof safe.

That's all i use - external HDD - 2 of them, alternating. I've had CD's rot out after 6 years. Every year, at Xmas time, I do the Great Media Conversion - for $200 a year, I buy whatever the biggest USB drive there is for $200 and then copy EVERYTHING over to it, and then add from there. Eventually the smaller drive can't keep up with the data, by then it's time to buy a new drive. Currently, I'm running a 250GB and a 160 GB La Cie, they are identical in content. The 160 GB is being replaced this month with a 500GB Western Digital, which I've seen in the range of $200. Eventually, the 50GB drive will be "small" and will be replaced with a 1TB drive and so on.
This is just one of those chores like chainging the oil.

One thing you can do instead of buying USB drives, is just buy a regular drive and put it in the USB case you have, you can save a bit or get a larger drive for the price. I paid $20 for a USB case and each time I put a larger drive in my laptop stick the older one in that case.
I still want to do some kind of offsite media other than the USB drive to supplement it. I found a tip on another site about making an archive folder and placing documents in there that are not used anymore but you want to keep around just in case like documents for previous jobs, old tax, bank, and other info. Then we will move stuff to that at the end of a year and back it to CD/DVD only then so it makes a bit less that I need to burn.
I've had pretty good luck with cd's not going bad, still have some backups from the 90's that read fine but I do plan on replacing the old every so often.