Back Up Your Work!!
Hey fellas, this topic doesn't squarely fall under RACING in its inspiration but derives from the larger diecast creator space, still
Some of you may know The Hotline Of Diecast hosted by Walter. Cool guy, knowledgeable & chill. Well, something went awry and now he is back to square one; two videos instead of hundreds, and a prior five figure subscriber count that reset too. I'm not here to speculate on the wherefore and why for this tragedy
Please please do NOT rely on YouTube as the sole repository for your videos. Get cloud space, get physical hard drives. Do something to hedge against the worst!! I've personally seen this happen before, a great guy lost six years worth of daily racing content
Also, remember the classic I.T. chestnut of advice: one backup is the same as no backups. All backups in the same location is the same as no backups. Protect yourselves out there, your work is WORTH IT
Discussion
Rule #1: Backup.
Rule #2: Backup.
Rule #3: Backup.
Rule #4: refer to Rule #1.
Personally, I have multiple external drives with backups on them: videos, movies, pictures, music. I have at least two of each, and regularly update them about once a month. I put a piece of blue painters tape on each drive and date it so I can see when the last backup was at any given time.
- Good idea with the tape! — redlinederby
- I'd go so far to suggest keeping one drive in a safe deposit box at your local bank branch, rotate out on a schedule — Chris_Hood
The struggle is real. As much as it feels like "I won't need that again" and want to save yourself 100GBs of space by deleting all that video work or whatever, it's not really worth it. And you don't have to be a rich tech nerd to have a decent backup system, plus drive space is cheaper than heartache.
At a minimum I save all the final renders for my movies. All the old races I shot years ago I still have all the exports even though I have deleted the build files and such.
As a professional in the field of IT Support, I can not emphasize enough the importance of backups.
Great topic, Chris!
I have been posting content to YT for a few years now, and have done ALL of the filming and editing on my mobile device. Unfortunately, I have to delete video files regularly to free up enough space for the next round of racing videos. I never thought about backing up my files to a hardrive or at least to my laptop prior to removing them from my phone's memory. I've been lucky so far with YT, and am not monetized so if something did happen, I would be severely disappointed!
What I really need to do is upgrade my editing software, and start using my laptop more for that process and storage. I have a 3TB hard drive as well, but never thought to back up my phone's storage on it. That will be my next venture in racing, so we shall see how it goes moving forward.
Is there any way to 'save', or backup video files from YT that are still active and available? I currently have just over 140 videos on my channel with 420 subscribers! I grew up leaning to work with computers at an early age, but technology is quickly passing me by! LOL
Thanks again, for the helpful topic and all of the advice i've read so far!
Kind Regards,
Craigster
P.S. - I love Walter's content! Super Cool Dude... I'll check in on him, but MAN what a shame...
I am certainly not an IT pro but I did the job in a large school district for about 17 years. And here is just a fine point when it comes to backups versus cloud storage. They are not the same in many cases. A backup is something that you create and put the various files that you wish to put aside. And by put aside that can mean anything from being in a specific folder on your hard drive to being on an external drive of some sort. That way those files are separate and protected from your actions and possibly operating system actions. In most cases, cloud storage is actively mirroring your system files. Or you may have created some folders on the cloud and then linked to them to folders on your device. The difference here is those files are actively being updated and or deleted as you work on them either in the cloud or on your device. as I've switched to more or less an Apple user I have iCloud space that I use quite a bit. And I have a small buffalo brand network storage device on my home network. That is my back up. Space
I will say I struggle with deciding on a cloud backup. Call it trust issues...I dunno...Google, Amazon, my own? They all suck but also do the job well, I'm sure. Adding local HDs for backup is one thing, passing on all your data to someone else is another, IMO. But I also know enough that it shouldn't matter.
If anyone has a recommendation based on their own use, I would appreciate a real human review :)
I have an external hard drive that I have some of my videos on.