I'm a hobbyist who lost a portable hard drive a few years ago, so now I prefer at least two physical backups of RAW files, and one JPG on-line. (Luckily, I still had all my jpgs on-line).
However, the whole process taught my how much I care about my tens of thousands of pictures that didn't make the cut. Not much. You have to trust yourself. If you determine that ten images sum up the weekend at the lake, then so be it.
First of all, as soon as I upload, I delete anything that is out of focus, duplicate, or uninteresting.
I keep a year of RAW photos on my laptop, and periodically copy them all to a portable drive. (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robocopy - great tool). I upload JPGs and share them with my relatives. The result is I generally have 3 copies -- 2 RAW and one JPG offsite.
At the end of the year I make
copies of all my favorite RAW files from the year, and back those up both to the portable drive and offsite. I also upload new copies of the favorites online as JPGS. Friends and family enjoy the 'year in review' album.
From then on I only worry about the favorites. The bulk RAW for the year are removed from the laptop, and the ones on the portable drive are relegated to folders that can be deleted after a few years. Occasionally, I purchase a new (bigger) external hard drive, copy everything, and archive the old one until I feel like purging.