Each of these three megapixel photos uses about three quarters of a megabyte of storage, so I'll have 75 megabytes of photos from just one weekend. You might have a similar result if you're the photographer at the family reunion or a child's birthday party. Hard disks fail eventually, so, since you won't have your digital memories in the old trusty shoe box, you'll want to have backups of all your photo files. If you're going to give up film photography and go digital, you should do some planning. Store your photo files by date and description and back them up on a regular basis.
Nobody seems to know for sure what media is best for long-term archiving of personal computer files.
My advice would be to maintain three copies of all your digital photos. The original on your computer's hard disk, a copy on another hard disk that you use as an external backup and a third on some kind of removable media such as CD ROM, Jaz, Orb, or DAT tape. View your photos once a year on each of these media to be sure they're still readable and stay current with the technology. If, in five years, you can't buy a Jaz drive any longer, transfer your photos to newer media before it breaks down. Another option is the recent development of online digital archive storage.