Over the years, I’ve had an evolving process for backing up things that are important to me. Not unlike many others, I started off creating backups on CD or DVD media, with the presumption that I could archive data (e.g., documents, photos, software) permanently this way. We now know, of course, that optical media is nowhere near permanent, with a life expectancy of 5-20 years, depending on type. I later relied on encrypted volumes in a second internal hard drive, mirrored with an external hard drive. This is certainly an improvement but also not optimal.