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My video production business generates a TON of data each week and keeping track of it used to keep me up at night. We’re talking actual nightmares about losing a project to harddrive theft, failure, etc.
Over the years we’ve had several hard drive failures and even a hard drive getting knocked off a table. Using this workflow in this post, I’ve been able to prevent the loss of critical data and client projects every time. Whether you’re considering this for a video or photography backup workflow I hope this guide gives you the tools you need to never have to experience data loss from theft or drive failures.
It’s one of the least exciting parts of the job, but one of the most important. It’s something that anyone with client projects and data should understand: importing, storing, and backing up your precious media.
This workflow is geared towards anyone who creates digital media (photo, video, graphic, etc) and is easily scaled to grow with your media and budget for storage.
Of course, what you’re about to read isn’t the only way to do this. For some creatives, it may be using just passport drives – for others, it may be RAID arrays or large networked storage arrays. Either way, the basics remain the same and scale accordingly for storing photos and storing data. Among the many work-related bad dreams I’ve had, losing footage is one of the worst.
What we’ll cover
TL;DR Tools to consider
Hedge – Checksum Ingest Software
Backup and Storage Basics
1. Be organized. The weakest point of a workflow is going to be at the import. Ideally, when on larger sets you hire a DIT to manage your media, but that’s not always possible. When you’re on location with a client, be sure you have a good system in place to make sure that all your cards are 1) marked and not going to be overwritten and 2) not forgotten about.
A long time back, I was filming a client project and one of my camera operators had already started filming on one of his memory cards before I gave him one of ours to use. I gave him one of mine to use instead and asked for the one he had been shooting on. He had stuffed it in his pocket… with several other cards, which several fell out when he went to pull out the one. He didn’t even know which card had been used. Please don’t ever do that. Get a card case of some kind and have a system.
I have two Pelican 0915 SD Card cases, one with green paper tape (safe cards) and one with red tape (used cards). As soon as a card comes out of a camera, I immediately use a red strip of paper tape, write the card name/number on it, and cover the contacts. It goes right into the red case, which is then secured with me for the rest of the shoot. There are a number of ways to do this well, but this method gives me the most confidence.
2. Make redundant copies. A common mistake is to make only one copy of your media and then duplicate that copy to other drives. If there happened to be any issues with the transfer, you’ve now duplicated that issue to all your copies.
I use Hedge (10% off with this link!), an all-in-one media backup suite made for video. (It works for any kind of transfer though) It’s built around best-practices for media backup, including making individual copies to each attached drive, high-speed transfers, and media verification through check-sums. The reality is that hard drives will eventually fail, and you don’t want to find yourself with no backup copies. If you’re using something like Offload from RedGiant, your mind will be blown by the speed you get out of Hedge.
3. Keep a clean copy of your media. Before you start transcoding media or dropping it into any software, make sure to keep an unaltered copy of the media. If you run into any issues with transcoding, make a mistake, or your proprietary software alters something, you want to make sure you can start fresh.
4. Keep everything separate. We work from the concept of 2+1 for the number of copies we make at a minimum – by the time we are done with a project, we usually have 4 or more copies. Two copies that live here at the office (one for editing, one on a backup drive) and then a third copy that is kept off-site. This helps protect you from not only drive failures but also the less likely scenarios such as break-ins or physical property damage from fire or weather. If you have a RAID array on site, that can act as your redundant on-site backup – just make sure you have something stored off-site as well. We also use cloud storage through G Suite as another form of backup for extra peace of mind.
5. (Bonus) Never leave hard drives where they could get stolen
In fact, don’t leave ANYTHING that makes you money unattended (especially in a car) where someone could break in and steal it. After a shoot, keep your cards safe and ingest them as soon as possible.
If you’re traveling, bring an extra harddrive that you can make a copy to and then ship that home. If your bags get lost or stolen, you’ll have a backup waiting for you when you get home.
Media Storage Basics
The cost of hard drives and digital media has dropped dramatically over the years. I almost never delete footage because hard drives are cheap enough to just budget in new drives with each project.
Copy Software: While using your OS’ file browser to transfer files gets the job done, it offers little protection against errors, whether human or technical. The best addition in the past year to my software toolkit is Hedge, a tool that handles simultaneous backups AND performs Check-Sum verification of your drives. Check-Sum verification is a foolproof method of ensuring that what was on that memory card, is now on your hard drive.
Hard drives: Not all hard drives are created equal! Even with a good backup strategy, it’s key to use drives that aren’t going to force you to test your strategy often. For field drives, I exclusively use La Cie Rugged drives which offer a high level of protection from bumps, spills, and drops. For long-term storage, I recommend a combination of a RAID array (we’ll get to that later) and external high performance passport drives (usb 3.1 drives are recommended).
Online Backup: First note – Online backups are NOT a replacement for multiple hard drive backups. You never know when a service might shut down, have a catastrophic failure, lose data, etc. I use two different backup services for our data transfers. Our main RAID is automatically backed up to BackBlaze, which provides unlimited data backups, and most importantly, backs up external drives. (External drives must be connected every 30 days, otherwise, the backup is deleted). This gives the peace of mind that your most important work is being continuously and automatically backed up.
The second backup service we use is Google Drive, specifically through G Suite. G Suite is Google’s business-focused email, file, and management system, which basically gives your business a branded version of Gmail and associated tools. (If you’re still using an email that ends in @Gmail.com, it’s time to move to a branded domain name anyway.) The Business edition of G Suite ($10/mo/user) offers unlimited data storage and a desktop application that you can easily upload your files with. Whenever we ingest a project, it’s added as a source in Hedge (read more about that below) and it’s backed up online. You can sign up for a business plan here.
The bullet-proof ingest and backup workflow
At the end of a long day of shooting, there’s still the chore of ingesting your media and properly backing it up. In this section, I’ll walk you through each step of my process.
1. Memory Cards
The foundation of keeping your media safe starts with using good media cards. It may be tempting to use the $10 SD card you found online or on the shelf at the store, but you really need to invest in quality cards that are reliable and fast enough to handle your camera’s write speed. I see people post on Facebook groups frequently about weird lines and artifacts in their video files and asking for help with fixing it- unfortunately, that is usually a result of a card that was too slow for the camera or a failing card and there is no fix for that. Also beware of counterfeit memory cards on online stores! My favorite brand of cards is the SanDisk Extreme Series which handles most of the cameras in my kit. Now if you’re getting up into high-end cameras, be sure to check the specs of what you need as those cards can easily be several hundred dollars, but the same concept applies.
2. Card Readers
Depending on your computer setup, the availability of multiple USB ports may be limited. Using my MacBook Pro, I got pretty tired of only being able to import one card at a time, so I purchased an Anker 4-port USB hub and multiple card readers to increase my ability to import up to 4 cards at once. Now if you want a less DIY solution, you can pick up a dedicated 4-Bank Lexar Reader Hub for under $80.
3. Storage Media
Since this can vary so much by the size of your operation and budget, I’ll keep this basic (using passport hard drives as an example) since the concept scales up to more complicated RAID arrays and network storage methods.
Make sure to get quality hard drives and don’t always go with the cheapest option. While Passport drives are cheap, consider getting a desktop drive that has a more quality internal HDD.
I typically try to stick with Western Digital. I shared the link about hard drive failure rates above, but it’s worth sharing again – Hard Drive Failure Rates – BackBlaze.
Always, always, always make multiple copies of your data. You should at least have two copies and then a third off-site. That could look like having a copy on your computer for editing, a backup copy on an external drive, and then the third hard drive at home. Always keep a clean, unmodified set of your files and be careful using editing programs to run your backups because they could be changing file data in the process.
Now at a more complex setup considering a drive for video editing, I’d recommend having a Drobo RAID as the primary backup destination, then having a passport drive as a secondary backup somewhere safe at the office. I have a 4TB Lacie Rugged Drive which I use to shuttle projects home where I keep my off-site backups on a hard drive.
Our office has gigabit internet, so everything gets uploaded to our Google Drive as a backup to the backups. You’ll need their middle-tier subscription for unlimited space.
3. Import Software
For several years, I relied on Finder to copy cards to hard drives but that resulted in a few times where it would have errors and I never felt completely confident in how it transferred the media. Getting into editing a few weeks after clearing your cards and finding out a file was corrupted is terrible, especially if it’s something really important like an interview. I was elated when Hedge Backup Software (10% off with this link!) launched a few years ago because it completely handles the backup workflow in a very simple and secure way. Hedge uses Checksum verification, which examines the original media file and then the copy and ensures that they are exactly the same which eliminates the potential of finding corrupted files later on. Furthermore, it creates a unique copy of every file on each copy destination giving extra security. Hedge is the fastest software solution I’ve ever used and it’s the cornerstone of my backup system.
Using Hedge is as simple as dragging your media cards to “Sources” and your hard drives to “Destinations”. Be sure to use good naming schemes with your cards to keep everything organized. Everyone has their own system in place for what works for their studio and team. For us, we typically use the camera name, card number, and then which camera it was, so that looks like A01_C300 (Camera A, Card 01, Camer from the C300).
Once you hit “Start Transfers, Hedge gets to work importing and verifying your media. It will show you the time remaining, as well as the transfer speeds to help you find any bottle necks in the transfer process (Slow hard drives, hubs, etc)
Hedge will do it’s thing and you will get a confirmation and the option to eject your media and add new cards!
Hedge also has introduced several new integrations to further help improve your post-production workflow. My favorite free add-on was the introduction of ParaShoot. ParaShoot will automatically check to make sure that card is fully backed up (another layer of security) and then “erase” the memory card. The cool part here is that it doesn’t actually delete any data. Rather it just scrambles a few things in the card’s header file, so that your camera will force you to format the card in-camera. If I pop a new card into my camera and don’t see the format note, I know something isn’t right.
With this workflow, I have had two hard drive mishaps over the years – one being a client knocking a harddrive off the table and the other one a complete drive failure. Hearing the clicking sound from a bad hard drive was horrifying, but no data was ultimately lost because I had proper backups that I could pull from.
And finally for the list of gear mentioned in this post:
