Good to see you getting organised, Stink.
The more anally retentive among us have been taking back ups for years, off to USB discs.

I've got three at the moment - one of which also backs up my parent's stuff and lives at their place, another has their and my stuff on and lives at my place, providing as Nick has already outlined - off-site back-ups.
You can burn my house, but you'll never take my photos/music!

In addition to this I've started applying more rigor to my photo storage recently. Text searching is now fast and effective, so it's possible to store photos en-mass in month-year named folders, with (where possible) event titled folders within. Makes clearing off stuff to back-up drives a damned sight easier!