I love my USB hard drives so much!

I have a WD Passport Essential that I use as my primary hard drive for work, which gives me the advantage of choosing the big screen on the iMac or going mobile with my MacBook (even if going mobile just means getting comfortable on the couch)—no internet connection/VPN/etc., etc. required.

I have a not-quite-as-portable USB drive for my TimeMachine backups (which includes backing up the WD Passport) and a third for "archives" of stuff I'll probably access once a year, if that often--old photos I never look at, that sort of thing.

I've been thinking of getting one more WD Passport for a redundant back-up that I can keep outside of the house, 'cause you can never be too careful.... The only thing stopping me is that I know myself: I'll back up to it the first time, put it in the trunk of the car for safe keeping, and then never ever ever get around to retrieving it to do a newer backup. Backups aren't really useful if they're a year-and-a-half old. :)

I tried one of the online backup places, but I work with large graphic files and videos—the initial upload time was just monstrous. (But...thinking out loud...I could start putting my current projects in a current projects folder and back just that up to an online service. That would at least let me avoid the "HOLY CRAP EVERYTHING I DID THE PAST TWO WEEKS HAS BEEN DESTROYED IN A FIRE, AND WE HAVE TO TURN THIS ISSUE INTO THE PRINTER TOMORROW!!!" problem.)

I think much the same as you do, and having only a laptop right now I have to keep a lot of my larger files on a USB drive.

I think ideally we need one drive for current (ideally daily) backups, and another for offsite - somethign so many people never think of.

Should the unthinkable ever happen, you will be grateful for that offsite drive...