Always capture at the best possible setting your camera has, you can always reduce quality later. Back up all your images to hard drive and CD/DVD disk, and check the back up is readable on another computer. I know it's obvious, but you don't have a film negative as insurance with a digital camera. If the hard drives dies you lose everything. There are plenty of external USB hard drives around, Maplin have this 320Gig unit for £60
http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?...rce=1&doy=13m8