FCP: Managing video footage backups and editing

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FCP: Managing video footage backups and editing

Hello Everyone. Hope You All are Well. I’m a Travel Vlogger, and I use FCP. I have video footage saved on 6 external hard drives (older), and newer footage on 1-2 external hard drives. For those who upload to YouTube, do You All make a backup of the footage You’ve already used? How often should a backup be made? Some of the footage is from 2014 or Earlier.

Also, is it better to backup all the footage from each external hard drive (could be a total of well over 18TB or more) onto one large capacity external hard drive for editing, or would it be better to just edit off of one external hard drive at a Time, and save the final product on another external hard drive? I just want to save Time. I have a list of roughly what Years’ footage is on what external hard drive, although some are duplicates.

After I get through editing my old footage, I will start to edit right off of a SanDisk Portable SSD. I know that method is better than the way I will be doing with the older external hard drives, but to avoid issues, I have to do it like that.

Thank You.

Posted on Dec 7, 2025 3:47 AM

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Answer 1

Dec 7, 2025 6:42 AM in response to pjanveja

It's up to you to decide how much of your footage you want to keep. If it's data delivered to a client for work, I think it's best to keep it for 2-3 years. Some people keep decades' worth of footage if they want to keep it as a personal memory.

I make videos as a hobby. I save my footage for a year, and after the second year, I export two MP4 files and keep them semi-permanently. One is the finished version, and the other is the exported version with sound effects, background music, titles, etc. removed. I save my entire library.

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