How long should i hang onto my old raw footage...

[Quivz]

I have a youtube channel. I make let's plays pretty regularly and i store all my old footage and audio in case i need to redo the video for some reason. But i'm starting to run out of space. Now i intend to get a hard drive dock and use some drives to keep this stuff but i dont have it yet and I'm out of space on the drive where i currently keep these files. I could delete some of the oldest videos and free up space, but I'm loathe to do so in case i need them again. I can get the uploaded versions from youtube again, but if i need to make a re-upload that requires editing, the raw files would be preferable to work with.

 

How long do you think its worth hanging onto the old files?

 

I imagine that any reason i have to redo the video would be copyright claimant ids or maybe if someone comments about something i could add/remove with an edit. I get zero views at the moment, which is sad, but i didn't start my channel with any intent of making profit, its more of a learning exercise for me. As a result i dont have any comments that would cause me to go back and change anything. I have edited one video due to an annoying content claim, but that was just a few seconds of muted audio so that the song playing on the radio in the area wasn't audible. Oh and once because i swore.

 

Shameless plug of my channel in case anyone is actually interested... Find my channel here.

[zeusthemoose]

3 minutes ago, Quivz said:

How long do you think its worth hanging onto the old files?

As long as you want, it’s up to you.
You could start uploading all the older footage to the cloud instead of keeping it locally and then downloading it if you need to edit.

[aisle9]

7 minutes ago, Quivz said:

I have a youtube channel. I make let's plays pretty regularly and i store all my old footage and audio in case i need to redo the video for some reason. But i'm starting to run out of space. Now i intend to get a hard drive dock and use some drives to keep this stuff but i dont have it yet and I'm out of space on the drive where i currently keep these files. I could delete some of the oldest videos and free up space, but I'm loathe to do so in case i need them again. I can get the uploaded versions from youtube again, but if i need to make a re-upload that requires editing, the raw files would be preferable to work with.

 

How long do you think its worth hanging onto the old files?

 

I imagine that any reason i have to redo the video would be copyright claimant ids or maybe if someone comments about something i could add/remove with an edit. I get zero views at the moment, which is sad, but i didn't start my channel with any intent of making profit, its more of a learning exercise for me. As a result i dont have any comments that would cause me to go back and change anything. I have edited one video due to an annoying content claim, but that was just a few seconds of muted audio so that the song playing on the radio in the area wasn't audible. Oh and once because i swore.

 

Shameless plug of my channel in case anyone is actually interested... Find my channel here.

What about something like OneDrive or Google Drive, where you can get 1TB on the cloud for $100-ish per year as a short-term fix?

[Quivz]

Just now, youngboy said:

What is your youtube channel about?

Mostly i play games and do "let's plays", but i also intend to do reviews and make tutorials for difficult bits of games. I also upload videos of my digital artwork (live video of me actually creating stuff) and intend to expand further into miniature painting as well. Its not a focused channel, its a hodgepodge and i like it that way.

[Quivz]

Hmmm... I had thought of cloud services, but for the same price i can get a dock and a decent size drive. Hell i've got a plethora of 1tb and 2tbs just sitting around doing nothing (probably full of ancient porn no ones watched in years), but i dont want to have to open my case all the time so the dock was my first thought. And i could find use for a NAS anyway so i would hang one of those off my network before i went as far as cloud services.

[PlayStation 2]

Really, for as long as it's necessary for you. I still have old VHS tapes I ripped archived from like 2018 simply because I feel a need for it.

[Letgomyleghoe]

33 minutes ago, aisle9 said:

1TB

Why not just buy an ssd now then?

[Quivz]

4 minutes ago, handymanshandle said:

Really, for as long as it's necessary for you. I still have old VHS tapes I ripped archived from like 2018 simply because I feel a need for it.

Lol. The problem is I'm a hoarder. Thats why i've already got a bunch of drives sitting on a shelf that haven't been accessed in years. If i was to keep things as long as i feel i need it, I'd be building a petabyte NAS to store 5 year old raw footage for a Youtube channel with 0 subscribers. I'm more trying to find what people normally do and then set that as a limit for myself so i dont end up with a massive pile of drives full of videos that i uploaded years ago.

 

6 minutes ago, Letgomyleghoe said:

Why not just buy an ssd now then?

The dock is on order. My preferred parts supplier is out of stock at the moment, but they should be getting it in by the end of the month. While i've got lots more sata ports on my mobo i don't have physical mounting space left in my case. Also i wouldn't store them on SSDs, i'm going to use HDDs for that. I use my SSDs for when i'm working on them.

[sub68]

I keep all my raws just in case sites go down or something bad happens

I would keep them until you die

 

[GDRRiley]

for youtube I would keep it for a year-2 so you could do end of the year highlights. My personal stuff I keep forever

[ThePointblank]

18 hours ago, aisle9 said:

What about something like OneDrive or Google Drive, where you can get 1TB on the cloud for $100-ish per year as a short-term fix?

I would say Backblaze would be a better option; their personal cloud backup is $6 per month for unlimited storage.