Pookie said:
I have two backups to my archive... when one fails I buy another and back up the good backup. Nothing get lost. If this is your only copy of critical file you've learned very painfully the real definition of backup.
+1 for two backups.
To expand the real definition, those two backups should be stored in physically separate locations (e.g. home/work or home/cloud). Having three copies of a critical file, all stored in the same room, means a fire takes out all copies.
As for photos, I actually have
four backup copies of the RAW files. I haven't yet had to delete RAW files from my laptop SSD to reclaim space, but in addition to my cloned backups, I do keep another set of backup HDDs at home/work just for RAW images because at some point, I'll need that space on my laptop and will start deleting the oldest RAW images. I waas almost there once before, but I swapped out my 500 GB HDD for a 1 TB SSD and postponed the 'problem'.