Cameras have a terrible habit of eating money.

First, there is lens-lust, that terrible affliction causing photographers to lose all control of their credit cards when faced with a piece of metal and glass bearing the legend 'f/2.8'.

Second, there are all the accessories that we never realised we needed. From backpacks to home studio systems.

And then there is storage of our valuable digital negatives.

In the old days, storing negatives typically involved a few boxes and perhaps, if we were particularly paranoid, a fire-safe. These days, things get a little more expensive ...

If you want an overview of the storage options, you may want to start by reading my beginners' guide.

I shoot mainly RAW and then convert to TIFF. I keep the original RAW file, as future software is likely to allow me to get more out of it; the TIFF, as the master version of the processed photo; sometimes a print-resolution JPEG; and a web-resolution negative. This typically adds up to around 73Mb per photo.

My laptop drive is a 60Gb one. I think you can see the problem.

On a desktop machine, the cheapest way to increase storage capacity is to fit additional drives to your tower system. On a laptop, you need external drives.

I use 250Mb Lacie firewire drives. I currently have one as my master and a second as my backup, and will then add further pairs as required. Firewire transfer speeds are faster than USB in real life because USB2 specs quote peak speeds while firewire specs quote sustained transfer rates.

If you're planning on buying external drives, my advice is to avoid Maxtor. I was originally considering the Maxtor 'One-touch' drives, but when I sought advice on IT lists, I can't tell you how many horror stories I got about Maxtor drives. One poor guy had just received his 5th replacement under warranty after the first four drives all failed in less than a year!

Lacie drives are Hitachi ones, which have a good reputation. And that gorgeous Porsche-designed casing doesn't hurt. :-)

To guard against the house-fire/burglary scenario, I have a secondary backup in the form of DVDs stored at a separate location. These are created using the 24x DVD-writer built in to my laptop.