I'm new and I've seen a few people post that they have 600 GB of video to store now.  For those of you that have been at this a while what is a reasonable expectation for the amount of video that you accumulate per year.  (I realize it depends on how often you fly your drone!)  A few benchmarks would be super helpful so that I don't over spec my setup but also don't end up buying a bunch of smaller drives over the course of the year.

Thanks!

I'm fairly new, but I've started out with a 4TB drive to begin with. 4K video and 20 MP photo take a lot of space.  I'm sure that I'll be buying more memory with more flights in the future.

Many factors in determining how much video any particular amount of space will hold. What resolution, frame rate, etc. are you shooting in? Try using a calculator like:

Video filesize calculator

I get 12 to 15gb of video for every battery on the p4p

I have 2 terabytes of hard drive storage on my desk top. So far, all is well. ;-)



RedHotPoker

This is a concern of mine as well. I have 1TB on my MacBook, and 2TB NAS, but I'm trying to determine the best approach to storage and backups. I've had USB HDDs fail in the past, which is no fun if you're depending on them as a backup plan.. I'm thinking a cloud service may be the way to go.

PizzaFiend Posted at 2017-4-29 05:01
This is a concern of mine as well. I have 1TB on my MacBook, and 2TB NAS, but I'm trying to determine the best approach to storage and backups. I've had USB HDDs fail in the past, which is no fun if you're depending on them as a backup plan.. I'm thinking a cloud service may be the way to go.

@PizzaFiend if you use a cloud service don't you need to have hard drive space too or can you just upload to the cloud?

EagleEyez Posted at 2017-5-4 15:49
@PizzaFiend if you use a cloud service don't you need to have hard drive space too or can you just upload to the cloud?

Why would you need your videos on both the cloud and hard drive?

I store all of my video (raw drone footage, extracted excerpts, final edited videos), along with photos, on a NAS with disk redundancy.  4 hard drives of total 16Tb capacity with 8Tb usable.  The NAS stores other things, but I'm otherwise good for a little while.
I will never rely on the cloud for anything other than providing a means for others to access selected (finished) videos and photos.

EagleEyez Posted at 2017-5-4 15:49
@PizzaFiend if you use a cloud service don't you need to have hard drive space too or can you just upload to the cloud?

Yes, but it provides a dependable back up as opposed to a single USB drive or otherwise expensive RAID systems.

Phantom3ProPilo Posted at 2017-5-4 21:29
Why would you need your videos on both the cloud and hard drive?

I thought the way Dropbox worked it "synced" your files to your hard drive so you had to have them there. I didn't think you could just upload to it.

EagleEyez Posted at 2017-5-8 13:00
I thought the way Dropbox worked it "synced" your files to your hard drive so you had to have them there. I didn't think you could just upload to it.

Yeah you're okay with just uploading them to Dropbox but you can have a double backup with files on the drive too
But cloud backup is enough and more secure than the hdd one

Whatever you decide on it will never be enough in the end. As an exprofessional photographer I found that early on. But I do receommend backup, to another drive of whatever variety you choose, possibly up in the clouds somewhere, and certainly a backup that is held off site, i.e. away from your home. Then you will know that the files are safe. We also backup onto DVD too just to make sure.

Mike

Phantom3ProPilo Posted at 2017-5-4 21:29
Why would you need your videos on both the cloud and hard drive?

BACK UP!! Especially if commercial projects.

Space is never too much!!!

fans9a7c0aa0 Posted at 2017-5-14 15:02
BACK UP!! Especially if commercial projects.

Yes, I understand
But cloud is good enough of a backup since they're reliable enough
Odds of cloud storage failing are minimal if you use a reliable cloud service

I  use 8TB drives for working projects and stock media and same size external USB backup for each drive there I only connect to the computer when I need to do the backup.
I never keep backup drives connected except when I need to do a backup and keep all original recordings on the recording media until backup has been made..

JoiCam Posted at 2017-5-15 01:36
I  use 8TB drives for working projects and stock media and same size external USB backup for each drive there I only connect to the computer when I need to do the backup.
I never keep backup drives connected except when I need to do a backup and keep all original recordings on the recording media until backup has been made..

Cloud storage is usually too costly for storage for drone video.  While access is good and reliable, speed is slower for large drone files.  1TB of cloud storage is about $120 a year.  If you video and save all flights, its not hard to generate 50GB a week of footage.  

I prefer to use local drives.  Western Digital has 4TB drives for about $120.

DroneGuyEd Posted at 2017-5-15 03:13
Cloud storage is usually too costly for storage for drone video.  While access is good and reliable, speed is slower for large drone files.  1TB of cloud storage is about $120 a year.  If you video and save all flights, its not hard to generate 50GB a week of footage.  

I prefer to use local drives.  Western Digital has 4TB drives for about $120.

Exactly. Cloud storage is good for many thinks but local storage for media and backups is the way to go for large amount of media.

Phantom3ProPilo Posted at 2017-5-14 22:52
Yes, I understand
But cloud is good enough of a backup since they're reliable enough
Odds of cloud storage failing are minimal if you use a reliable cloud service

With all due respect having just one copy in the cloud is NOT Good enough. It's true they are pretty reliable and for sure they are running their own backups so we would think BUT there have already been cases where cloud backups have been hacked. I would NEVER just depend on a cloud backup alone. I personally have my videos on my laptop, then on a portable drive I believe it's a 5 TB Western Digital and I also use Back Blaze for my cloud backup. I used to keep one of my small portable backups off-site in a safe deposit box. So many people have a couple of backups at home but don't think about the house burning down then it does not matter if you have 100 of them they are all gone.  ! original 1 onsite backup 1 off-site backup and 1 in the cloud is what I think is safe if your information is valuable and you cannot afford to lose it. All of that would not cost you much. My cloud backup is $5.00 a month and is unlimited and they don't throttle you on the speeds, these are things you need to think about when shopping for cloud backup. One of the biggest Carbonite I believe throttles your speed. This may sound like overkill but I once lost a hard drive that I had NOT one backup of and it had all my original work that took over 2 years to make for a course I taught that brought in about $300K a year cash! So is $75.00 a year too much to Make sure that will never happen again??? NOOOOO... Also, BackBlaze has a great blog where they analyse all the different desktop and portable drives and report how often they fail etc. It's a great resource when shopping for drives because even certain models of certain years were either much better or much worse than others. If you want to try Backblaze for 3 months FREE Here is a link:

https://secure.backblaze.com/r/00tnq4   

plus everything is encrypted before it ever leaves your computer. Even if you don't use them check out their blog for the FREE info on drives.  Good luck!