I’m sorry if this is the wrong place, but I need some advice or guidance.
I’m working hard on my channel and making a lot of videos, and the source files are heavy (videos).
I use Google Drive (one) with a 2gb paid account that is almost Full.
My question is, do you keep the files after the final video is created? Or delete everything.
If yes, do you put them in the cloud? Which service to use?
Thank you in advance.
Simply HELL NO!!!
I have 3 external drives. My Files I, My Files II, and My Backups. All my stuff is save between the first two and then those are backed up onto the My Backups drive. Will never use cloud storage.
In my opinion cloud storage is for stuff you want to share with yourself or others while on the move. And I would never use a a cloud owned by some tech corporation.
For personal stuff I rent a server with Nextcloud and may put some photos I take, or an article I am working on it, maybe the details of the hotel, so I can access them from my phone or my travel machine.
When working on a shared project, I save stuff to the KDE cloud we have for contractors and trusted community members who are working on the same thing.
But, as a @BlueUSA, we don’t do this for safety. Only convenience. For safety you use hefty external drives labelled “Backup”.
I keep all the source files. There’s always the possibility of needing to re-upload a video to Youtube due to all kinds of unforeseen issues, or uploading the videos to new platforms, etc. I have two 4TB external hard drives.
I use cloud storage as a redundant backup for some small things, but not for the source files of my videos.
Cloud is handy for syncing between devices and maaaaabye as a secondary or tertiary backup. Never use any commercial cloud as your primary and only storage.
I’ve seen people who made this mistake and lost files in iCloud, Dropbox and OneDrive due to sync errors. These services have anywhere from 30 days to 6 months of deleted files history to un-delete your files but it often takes more than that to realize you have lost files and by then they’re gone for good.
I don’t store anything remotely because I know too much about the companies involved in offering these services. To put it simply, they are pure filth. They only seek to gather as much of our data as possible. I archive to local storage anything that is important, with the really important stuff going to Blu-ray. Tedious but helps me sleep at night. I keep all source files in case I want to re-edit.
They are indeed.
The only commercial service I kind of trust is Backblaze Desktop Backup. It’s a dedicated backup service and backup is all it does and it does it relatively well. Sadly, there is no Linux client. The backup is encrypted and you have the key so they don’t have any AI rummaging through your photos and documents to mine your data the way Dropbox, OneDrive, iCloud, etc. do. There is zero expectation of privacy with those services.
Still, I would not make Backblaze my sole backup as it did have a minor glitch once that resulted in two weeks of skipped backups for one of my drives.
One other option would be to pay one of the Nextcloud providers, or roll your own Nextcloud instance, if you want a private, accessible-anywhere cloud storage/sync. Most support server side encryption too, so your stuff will be private. And Nextcloud is not bloated like Dropbox and others.
Finally, Hetzner offers low priced StorageBox accessible via SSH/SFTP.
Hetzner is also what I’m using. You can access the storage box with a wide variety of protocols and encrypt everything. The encryption does not run on their servers, they will only ever see the encrypted files. They still can and will collect the metadata for billing and for compliance with German law, so if you’re concerned about that, you will need to access them via a VPN or Tor.
You can also set up a Nextcloud and use the storagebox as external storage via WebDAV. Then you can also encrypt all files on the storagebox.
I never use a cloud and don’t want to. I do my synchronisation internally, on several HDDs. That is important. Because sometimes I delete something in the original and when I want it again, it is also deleted in the current backup. So I make sure that I can find it again in one of the older backups.
I never delete the project files - because I’m still developing, especially in audio editing. So I can always improve an old project with my current knowledge and skills if I want to.