Jeff Evans
You still don't need the cloud.  It is not a good way to go at all.  All you need is a small safe hidden in your studio.  Put the backup drives in there.  Even if your house burnt down and was destroyed the safe and its contents would still be there.  In Dave's case they either would not have been able to open it or take it away either.
 
Another smart thing to do is put a heavy duty deadlock on your studio and when you go out you lock it up. I was broken into in 1997 and although yes they took other stuff from the house they could not get into the studio and did not have the means to do it. Most people who are stealing will not have the means to get in through a lock like this. Also a solid door goes a long way as well. So nothing was touched in there at least.  Alarm systems also can scare off some people as well.

I still don't understand anyone's objection to cloud storage as an extra layer of protection, especially since you can encrypt your data. Safes have been stolen. Lock boxes have been stolen. I've even heard cases of police and fire crews stealing stuff after a fire or other disaster. It's not likely, but it happens. Burglars find a safe and think they've hit the jackpot, if only they can get it home and open it somehow. Whether or not a safe is waterproof in case of flood is dubious. Fire safes are generally only rated safe for paper, not hard drives. Would you really trust a fireproof safe to keep your data intact with the kind of heat that's going to build up in there? I wouldn't.
 
Another advantage of a cloud backup is that you can start recovering your data faster in the event of a fire than if it were somewhere in a pile of smoldering rubble in a fireproof box (either intact or not). How long before the fire department and/or police allow you access to recover the box or safe? It could days before the structure is deemed safe enough to enter, and even then you're going to have to sift through a pile of charcoal to find it. Need the data faster than that? Simply download it from your cloud account. 
 
I don't think there is anything wrong with covering all bases. 

I think cloud backup is fine as long as it is a second line of defense, NOT your only backup.  Hard drives first then cloud.
 
Also some of my files are pretty big. How long does it take you to upload say 2 or 3 Gig?
 
DVD's are fine as a backup but only the standard 4.7 Gig DVD's. Not dual layer or Blue Ray. Not good I believe.  I have got DVD's (and CD's) dating back to the late 80's and 90's that are still perfect today.  Something people don't know either is there are CD's and DVD's but also mastering grade ones which are way better in terms of error rates and data retention.  I used to work for the National Library in Canberra Australia and they still use very high quality CD's for backup. (And analog tape would you believe. Oral History department) They have a life of 150 years! The room they are stored in is at I think 18 degrees C and a certain humidity. I have just kept mine in a cool space for years and they are still perfect.
 
My friend who is a photographer has got a safe that is fire proof and water proof and probably nuclear explosion proof.  No one would ever find it in his studio either, period.  No police or fireman could even lift this thing.
A safe is a good idea but you would have to invest in it though. I think keeping backups off site is probably a better option. (and cheaper)
 
One day someone will hack into the cloud and erase everything just to show it can be done. Only a matter of time. If you think it cannot be done you are deluding yourself.

Jeff Evans
I think cloud backup is fine as long as it is a second line of defense, NOT your only backup.  Hard drives first then cloud.
 
Also some of my files are pretty big. How long does it take you to upload say 2 or 3 Gig?
 
DVD's are fine as a backup but only the standard 4.7 Gig DVD's. Not dual layer or Blue Ray. Not good I believe.  I have got DVD's (and CD's) dating back to the late 80's and 90's that are still perfect today.  Something people don't know either is there are CD's and DVD's but also mastering grade ones which are way better in terms of error rates and data retention.  I used to work for the National Library in Canberra Australia and they still use very high quality CD's for backup. (And analog tape would you believe. Oral History department) They have a life of 150 years! The room they are stored in is at I think 18 degrees C and a certain humidity. I have just kept mine in a cool space for years and they are still perfect.
 
My friend who is a photographer has got a safe that is fire proof and water proof and probably nuclear explosion proof.  No one would ever find it in his studio either, period.  No police or fireman could even lift this thing.
A safe is a good idea but you would have to invest in it though. I think keeping backups off site is probably a better option. (and cheaper)
 
One day someone will hack into the cloud and erase everything just to show it can be done. Only a matter of time. If you think it cannot be done you are deluding yourself.

Which is why neither I, or as far as I can tell anyone else here, has ever suggesting using the cloud as a sole backup method. I just think if you combine physical backups with cloud backups you increase your security exponentially. What are the chances of losing your data in a fire or flood AND having your cloud backups compromised at the same time? I would say: negligible. Whereas the chance of losing your data in a fire or floor OR having your cloud backups compromised is probably very small but not negligible. 
 
I appreciate that uploading vast quantities of data takes a long time. But once you've made that initial upload, a good cloud backup service will only sync modified files - you're not going to have to upload all of your data every day. For large initial backups, Crashplan can ship you a drive which you ship back to them with your data. And after that it's pretty much plain sailing. Backups happen automatically in the background. I have Crashplan running all the time and I've never noticed any performance hit or had problems of any kind. And there's another benefit to using a high quality cloud backup like Crashplan - you get access to a version history of files. Have you ever taken a project in a direction that you regretted later? Or made changes to a synth patch in a project that you wished you could turn back the clock on a few weeks later? I do this quite often and it's simply a matter of opening the Crashplan app and selecting an older version of the project from the version history. It's saved my ass on a number of occasions. Sure I could be saving a version history of projects and multiple versions of patches on my hard drive, but it's great to have this happen automatically without having to think about it, and without the file bloat in your project folders. 

Thanks James for the info about the cloud backup systems that are available out there. It is good to know more about how they work.  My folders tend to get big rather quickly and also I tend to generate a lot of new files each time I work so I am not sure how that would work for me but interesting none the less.
 
Studio One allows for different versions of a song to be saved even within just one song file so I have got something similar now. It is very good really as you can go back to a previous version very fast. They are all kept too so you are not writing over the top of previous versions.
 
 

I wonder how reliable Blue Ray disc are for storage. ? I have no idea.
 
 
I wouldn't use any burned disks, they are short lived. Pressed disks are more reliable but a burned disk is light sensitive and one little scratch and it's toast. USB storage is inexpensive and should be around for a long time yet. 
If your data is priceless then one should not be cheaping out about backups. 
 
I made USB sticks with all our family photos and gave them to most people in my family. We also make sure we each dump phones and cameras to each others computers from time to time. 
My sister in law thought she'd lost everything and I reminded her that I had her files. In the end she only lost a half a year, not 8. 
 
What just happened to Dave ( bitflipper) stands as a grim reminder about back ups and off site storage. 

I use Acronis True Image.
It backs up to my external USB drive and also to the cloud. 
Everything is checked and double-checks. 
I have all my DAW song files as a backup set, all my documents, and all my pics. 
I also upload to OneDrive some of the same files just to have them.
 
Acronis does all of this in the background. I just go in and review the status and reports a couple times a week. 
 

jamesg1213
As a footnote, I wouldn't entirely trust bundle files for back-ups. I went through some back-up DVDs from about 5 years ago recently, and only about half the bundle files would open successfully.

Yup. Bundles are best used as a one way transport to be opened and saved as a true project on the receiving end and discard the bundle after that. 
 
They are not a means to be used eons later.
 

USB sticks are not  a reliable form of long term storage so don't go down that path.  I have had mine and student USB sticks just die and become unreadable etc.  They are too easy to remove from a computer by just yanking them out and although they usually survive sometimes they dont.  They are great for shorter term transferring of data from one device to another and on that score they are excellent.
 
I know many probably won't go down the DVD path either but for me it still works and is very reliable.  All you have to do is use quality discs, keep them out of the light and put them in their case so they won't scratch, store them correctly in the right environment and you are good to go.  Like I said I have CD's and DVD's that are 20 years and over and they are still perfect today.  The drive also needs to be in good shape too.
 
Another option that my photographer friend uses is the Drobo drive system which is constantly backing up data in the background all the time. That has saved him a few times too.
 
 

It would be nice to one day have an affordable, reliable media to use for archival purposes.

There's always VHS....lol