Do you save all those raw files from mavic pro from every flight ? External storage/ Buy cloud storage ?

[BingErr]

I have a WD 6TB network drive dedicated for video and pics. It's actually 2 drives with one mirroring the main drive in case it fails.

Good Idea. I should mirror mine as well.

 

[BingErr]

I know every one take photos and mainly records video while flying. My main concern is the storage.
My laptop has just around 50gigs remained. If I take 3 flight say each 22 mins and start recording from takeoff to landing in 4k then it will be around 25Gigs !
I generally upload in youtube by selecting best clips and trimming and mixing making total duration around 5-6 mins.

Now after I upload I am always in delima whether to delete all those raw videos I took or save it some where.
I hate to delete it and I don't have space to save it. duhhh

What are other pilots doing with all those raw videos they took ? Deleting it after extracting best clips or saving all those raw videos ?

I have several drives that range from 6-8 TB. I don't have them mirrored, so I hope they don't ever die. But I don't run them all the time. Only when I'm dumping footage. I regret not saving some of my flights with my Phantom 3 so now I save everything. There are good options out there right now in the 8TB range. Not super fast drives but good enough for a backup.

$124.99 Western Digital

https://amzn.to/2pLZRHt

$139.99 Seagate

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[CrouchyUK]

I used to upload all the raw files to Dropbox and paid for the service. Then I realised that my Office 365 subscription included 1TB MS OneDrive cloud storage for "free". I moved it all over- but it was a lengthy painful process downloading it all and re-uploading, balancing spare capacity on my notebook HDD. The Onedrive is now getting full as well- now I realise I get 1TB each for up to 5 users on Office 365 i am trying to figure out how to utilise the other allowances.......

 

[Johnmcl7]

The main problem with external disks are their life span. Those rotating SATA disk has life span of around 5 years. And after that you never know when the problem arises and there is always risk of data loss. And all those old videos will be gone in seconds.
One solution is to buy SSD external drives which has better life span instead of those old SATA drives. But they are very expensive.
For these exact same concern I am leaning towards cloud storage like premium google drive or Dropbox etc..
But they are not cheap either

You should never rely on any single source for your data, it should always be backed up somewhere else. The lifespan of a hard drive is a pure estimate and I've seen some fail within 30 days and I've seen some run for 15 years 24/7 without issue.

SSD's are absolutely not a solution, they certainly offer fantastic performance, low heat and power plus they're not vulnerable to shock damage but they can also fail at any time, all it needs is for one of those complex electronic chips to fail and your data is toast. There's almost never any warning an SSD is going to fail and there's no chance of data recovery either, I've seen enterprise grade SSD's with a 10 year lifespan not even survive a single year.

From a practical point of view SSD's just aren't viable for bulk storage yet for ordinary users unless you have very, very deep pockets. It's possible to get a USB 14TB HDD for £250 and the current cheapest 15TB SSD is a whopping £2,100, the SSD's are getting better on price and I think we'll see them take over from HDD's for bulk storage since HDD manufacturers are having problems increasing capacity but we're not there yet.

I've nothing against SSD's and use them extensively myself but they should in no way be trusted more than hard drives, it's a mistake I've seen a few people make and then surprised not only when the SSD failed but when I tell them I can't recover their data.

It's probably also worth mentioning another common mistake is to believe RAID 1 mirroring (where data is written identically across a pair of drives) is a suitable backup system when it's not. The technology is a great way to keep a system running in the event of a disk failure but it doesn't function as a backup because anything that happens to one disc, happens to the other. That means if files are accidentally modified or deleted, corrupted, encrypted my malware, blown out by a power failure etc. then the data is lost on both drives. Whereas a separate backup system prevents this from happening.

 

[The Rolling Drones]

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B076MPMZDV/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I have a couple of these, they were on sale for $89.95 a while back.

I keep my eye on stuff with camelcamelcamel price tracker to get the best deal and see price trends.

WD 6TB WD Elements Desktop Hard Drive, USB 3.0 - WDBWLG0060HBK-NESN (B076MPMZDV)

Amazon price tracking & price history for WD 6TB WD Elements Desktop Hard Drive, USB 3.0 - WDBWLG0060HBK-NESN (B076MPMZDV)

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[Johnmcl7]

I think the five years means if you are using them continuously which you clearly don't need to do.
I have a 500GB one attached to router USB has run continuously longer than that so results will vary.
Looking back at drone video recorded years ago there is very little worth keeping mainly due to inferior video quality so most gets deleted though most edited material is kept.
Stills take up less space but same applies to a large extent.
So the general rule here is save to PC hard drive for up to a year, then select more serious recordings from special outings etc to save - but the great majority can be dumped if no finished video edit has been created after a year or so.

I guess i depends what you want from your video, while there's many videos I have which are of no use for publishing I still like to have them as memories. When I first bought my drone I used to take it and the dog up to a local forest for a lot of practice flights, now a few years later that section of the forest is no longer open and grown considerably while the other side has been cut down. It's quite remarkable now when I look at those early videos just how much it's changed and as much as I don't like to be morbid, I will treasure these videos all the more when the dog has passed away.

Similarly when looking through old action camera videos I came across an early one I'd taken when I was fairly new to mountain biking. The quality is poor as the camera is helmet mounted and wobbling slightly and my riding is absolutely atrocious but it's great to have as a reminder.

 

[bushie]

I have a QNAP NAS with Raid mounted in a rack along with UPS cooling fans, switch, NBN conection etc. The QNAP backs up to further hard drives so I have a couple of copies. I keep all my video, from video camera, Mavic and phone. I can upload to the QNAP from my laptop when away from home.

 

[Bob1956]

If I'm flying, I'm recording. But I tend to fly the same ground over and over, namely the open fields and woods surrounding the house. If something interesting happens I'll label that footage as a "keeper" and eventually it ends up on an external drive. Really good stuff gets cut down and stays on the laptop to show people.
But most of my footage gets deleted. I'm flying the drone for the pure pleasure of flying it, not creating art. The camera is acting more like an airborne dash cam.

 

[Blitzkrieg]

I have a HP DL380 with 64TB of storage, currently I have 5TB of this set aside for my drone vids. When I get to 1TB of space left I archive everything to LTO-7 tape and erase the partition. When and if I need something that I shot 2 years ago I can just get it from tape.