In reply to ChrisJD:
Thanks for that. I've just re-read the whole discussion and learned a little bit more about my choice of work flow.
You'll be pleased to know that I have finally stopped the practice of converting to JPEG. However my work-flow still differs from the considered best practice of trusting in Lightroom Catalogues. Catalogues can fail and/or become corrupt and this scares me.
My preferred work-flow, following advice and guidance from both yourself and other Lightroom Jedi is as follows:
Import RAW files to Lightroom
Use a preset profile, adapted from your initial sample profile
Kill off the duff images
Tinker with the best images, if so inclined.
Add key words to the images
Export the images as DNG files, with their Key words imbedded into the images, into a file structure on my computer.
And for those with a sensitive mind look away now. I delete the RAW files to save space.
My thinking is that the DNG files are as good as RAW flies with the added benefit of having key words attached for finding images that I want through a quick search of those key words.
As for file structure on my computer:
I keep all my images in a main folder titled with the year that I took the images.
Inside that main annual folder I keep smaller folders of the events that I photographed. The folder gets a name and date when taken.
And all this has its own back-up structure. I find backing up my images more important than the concept of backing up a Lightroom catalogue. At the moment I have resisted in creating a Lightroom catalogue as it can be somewhere between 5Gb and 10GB and I find this too big to rely on for a piece of software that could be made obsolete in 10 years.
At least I've stopped saving to JPEG.