Is it smart to keep a hard drive for all your footage?

Product Support
1

I’m new to this and was wondering… is it a good idea to use a hard drive to save all my video footage? Or is there a better way to keep everything safe?

2

Yes, that’s a great plan. You don’t need a super pricey one, but you do need plenty of space. And remember, if it’s important footage, have two copies. One copy isn’t really a backup.

3

That’s what I do too.

4

Rio said:
That’s what I do too.

Same here. I got a 4TB drive just for my drone footage. I dump everything from my memory cards onto it. If the footage is really valuable, I’d suggest having some backup. I don’t worry too much, but I keep my best stuff on my laptop or in the cloud.

5

I just save stuff I don’t need on private YouTube videos.

6

Yeah, it’s a good idea.

7

It works until it doesn’t. Make sure you have a second drive and back up regularly!

8

Make sure the drive is fast enough too, so you’re not stuck waiting forever for files to transfer.

9

I’d get a good SSD and set up some cloud backup, just to be safe.

10

Isn’t cloud storage better? I mean, hard drives and SSDs can fail, right?

11

You definitely need a hard drive and maybe cloud storage. I have several 4TB drives and keep most of my stuff online as well.

12

I use two drives and keep them in separate places. I copy everything to one, and every six months, I sync it with another drive I keep in the shed. For sharing, I upload the good stuff to YouTube as unlisted.

13

Especially important if you’re traveling.

14

I’d suggest an SSD. I use a 5400 RPM drive, but playback can be slow sometimes. When I move the file to my desktop, it plays fine.

15

Lyle said:
I’d suggest an SSD. I use a 5400 RPM drive, but playback can be slow sometimes. When I move the file to my desktop, it plays fine.

Even slower drives should handle 4K playback unless something’s wrong. Could be your USB port, cable, or maybe your computer struggles with the load.

16

@Adi
Yeah, my computer’s pretty good, but I might have been using battery mode. Anyway, I’d pick SSD over a regular drive.

17

One hard drive isn’t enough. Redundancy is key. A NAS with RAID is better because if a drive fails, you don’t lose anything. Set up backups if you care about your files.