I found this study mentioned on eHomeUpgrade very interesting. A recent study suggested the average American had an average of $1,135 of content stored on electronically, but younger adults aged 18 to 24 have $2,199 of content.

Also in the findings:

• More than half of those surveyed (56%) stated that they felt all the photos, music, movies and video games they have stored is somewhat important, valuable or priceless.
• Nearly one in five said their digital content was “priceless.”

With content ever increasing with cheaper hard drives, I think the options for backing things up is woefully inadequate. Backing things up to DVD-R, probably the cheapest consumer option, would take a long time to backup 500GB of data, and give you carpal tunnel syndrome in the process as you swap out over a hundred DVD-Rs. 500GB of data sounds like a lot, but with MP3 collections, digital photos, and digital video home movies, those hard drives fill up fast.