When to toss out working files?

[Rick McCleary]

It seems that the entire back-up strategy revolves around having three copies of each file on a discreet volume at any one time. 

Looking at it backwards, the culmination of the entire workflow results in one copy on the primary archive hard drive (live and local - JBOD), one copy on the backup hard drive, and one copy on a DVD.  All of these copies are in identically named buckets.

The risky part is juggling those three copies as the image file moves from the initial CF download through all the steps of the process - renaming, applying metadata, applying Camera Raw adjustments, converting to DNG. 

At what point in the process do you consider it safe to toss out all lthe working files that are clogging up my Temp hard drives?  Is the burning of the DVD the only safe time?  Or can it be done after the final DNG's are saved to the live/local HD bucket and then backed up to a different HD (prior to the DVD burn.)

I'm trying to balance my sense of expediency with my sense of paranoia.

[peterkrogh]

Rick,
Did you read the other thread about where to put working files? I go over this at the end of that thread.  The short answer is that I feel free tossing them once the DNGs have been made and are on at least three places.
Peter