Digital Photography - SD Cards - Storage ?

I have 8TB of hard drive space on my computer (well one 2.5TB drive is external) so I just load them on hard drives when they are full and start over. If they are important photos I then copy them on 2 different hard drives and sometimes even back up on cd or dvdr just in case one HD happens to crash

I haven't yet. I just built this computer less than a year ago. I built it using a Remote control car body as the case to hook to my Television. As I said there is only 5.5 TB internal and another 2.5TB that is external. I use it as my DVR, Blu-ray/dvb player and Cable Box also, I put a slot in Blu-Ray Burner in it so I could play/burn all media's since it was going to be hooked to the TV.

Edit: I just remembered it also has a 128MB SSD for the OS that I didn't factor in but its so small it doesn't really matter. The other two are just WD Black edition 3TB and 2.5TB Hard drives. When I first built it I didn't have the SSD but one of the Hard drives started having problems and I had to get it replaced and while I was waiting for WD to send the new one back I went ahead and installed the SSD to get it back up and running

...only 5.5 terabytes!

"A terabyte (TB) is a measure of computer storage capacity that is 2 to the 40th power or approximately a trillion bytes (that is, a thousand gigabytes). The prefix tera is derived from the Greek word for monster."

http://searchstorage.techtarget.com...ion/terabyte

back to the subject -

I sent the same query to my cousin, a professional 'tog' for 40 years, who has seen the evolution of his art & trade up close. His reply -
"My system is simple. When full, copy to a stick (preferably a eucalypt). Then put the card back in the camera and delete all images, then you have a fresh card again, save having to store sticks like kindling in the fire place!
Or ... chuck the used ones on the corner of the loungeroom side table, so then when there's crap on TV, you can collect them from between the spare change and miscellaneous must-files or put-aways, and sort through the images yet again!"

what surprizes me is that none of the respondents preserve the SD card. I would have thought that the SD is the "original", and every copy might acquire transcription- or other errors. I understand the importance of having a back-up, but I don't understand why no-one keeps the original ...