Cloud or External Hard Drive for storing media files/projects?

[CC268]

Background: I am a hobbyist who takes drone and video footage of our family vacations, etc. I don't do this professionally or for a living.

Lately, I have been learning about proper storage optimization for video editing. I am doing some upgrades to my computer storage to be better suited for video editing.

However, one thing I seem to be pretty overwhelmed by is how to properly backup/store my archived media files/projects. There are so many different options. Obviously there are normal external hard drives, RAID external hard drive setups, cloud storage (Google, DropBox, Amazon, OneDrive, etc), and even some DIY enclosures that allow you to build your own external hard drive/RAID setup.

I am looking for some guidance here because I just don't know which of these methods I should be using and what may be the most cost effective solution for a hobbyist such as myself. I'd like to spend less than $200 for now on a backup solution. I've thought about looking into cloud storage as well.

What are your guys' suggestions?

I really appreciate any feedback/help here.

[Peru Bob · Accepted solution]

I use three external hard drives for each type of media (photos, video, project files [and associated media], etc.) that I backup:

1) I have a "working copy" as the main archive of the media from which I copy media to my editing computer media drive to use in projects.

2) The second copy is an off site copy I keep at my place of work.

3) The third copy is used to add media  when backing up.  It is taken to the off site backup location and the off site backup is brought home and the new backup media is added to it.

I also have a backup drive on my editing computer.  I don't remove any backup files from that hard drive until they are archived and backed up on all external drives.

I have reservations about cloud storage.  My daughter uses Carbonite and is very happy with it, but she doesn't have the amount of media I need to back up.

CC268  wrote

I'd like to spend less than $200

That would be a start, however, video footage requires a lot of hard drive space, especially if you are shooting 4K and higher.

Ask yourself:

How much would I be willing to spend to recover my files (if they would even be recoverable) if they were lost verses what I would be willing to invest as insurance against that loss?

Also, see Schofield's second law:

Follow Schofield's Three Laws of Computing and avoid disasters | ZDNet

[CC268]

Thanks - like I said, I am simply a hobbyist and I don't shoot large amounts of footage but once or twice a year. Otherwise I shoot small amounts of footage and have relatively small data files. At this point my thoughts are to just go with a basic external drive. Or create my own external drive using a bay and maybe WD Blues or something.

[Jim_Simon]

https://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100167526%20600500572&IsNodeId=1&bop=An...

[Jim_Simon]

I use externals for my backups.  You can find 4TB portable drives for less than $200.  When one fills up, I buy another.

[kityb84058633]

External drives are great, until they become lost, stolen or damaged. I realized this after backing up my life's worth of photos onto an external - then I sat there, looking at it, small and vulnerable, holding my life's memories . . .

So, I think a cloud backup is the best safeguard. The question remains: do they work well with Adobe products?

For example: I noticed that Illustrator has created a ton of folders and files to store things, and even though I created folders for my Illustrator projects to save on my google drive and thought I pointed it to do so, it doesn't. I've heard that Illustrator only likes to save files on the hard drive where it is installed, and asking it to do anything else is verboten. Do you have any info on that?

I want to make sure all of my Illustrator files are correctly backed up to the cloud, even if I have to do it manually. Thank you : )

[Jim_Simon]

I think a cloud backup is the best safeguard.

For pictures, I'd agree.

For professional video production, that kind of storage would be prohibitively pricey for the bulk of PP users.

External hard drives are the best option for archiving.  Duplicate drives in two locations is still significantly cheaper than cloud storage.