Best storage options for Flip videos
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Anonymous
| I have 4+ years worth of Flip videos of DCs. Right now, they are all just saved on my laptop, which I know is asking for trouble. I'm starting to run out of storage space on my laptop, so I'm looking for alternative storage options. In order to free up space, I would be moving the videos permanently. What do others do about storing videos? Is an external hard drive a safe option? I worry somewhat about that failing/the house burning down/etc., but I'm also overwhelmed by all the cloud providers. I don't need a service that automatically syncs everything, just a secure location where I can move videos once in a while and know they'll be safe. FWIW, I use Picasa for my photos. Thanks! |
Anonymous
| I'm interested in this also! I thought I had read that Flip went out of business, or at least stopped selling cameras and I've been storing the videos on their site. I was just going to get DVDs made up. |
Anonymous
|
Another poster hoping for some insights. Quite apart from OP's storage issue (which I would think would be solved by DVDs or an external hard drive), I'm worried that since they stopped selling the Flip cameras, someday they'll stop supporting the FlipShare software too -- and then I'll have all these videos in some outdated proprietary format with no way to access them.
So in addition to storage, I'd pose the question, is it time to switch them into a different format (and if so, what/how)? |
Freeman
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| Can you give us some idea of the size, in MB or GB, you would need to back these up? For important files, I would usually recommend some kind of off-site storage, preferably in the cloud, but the amount of space needed will impact the recommendations. |
Anonymous
| OP here. I have about 35 GB of videos. |
Freeman
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|
While you could move the files onto an external hard drive, you are right that it would still be a single point of failure and not really provide a backup even though it would free up space. My recommendation would depend on how often you access the videos. If you generally just record, store, and rarely actually look at them, then your best bet would probably be utilizing one of the cloud storage providers. Google offers something like 100GB for $5 per month, and there are others out there as well.(I've never compared prices, so no specific recommendation) You would have to manually upload the files there, and then download them when you wanted to view them. If you prefer to have a local copy available for faster viewing, editing, etc., then I would probably go with a hybrid approach. Buy a good external drive to store the videos, freeing up space on your laptop, but also get an online backup service to keep a safe copy outside your home.(I've used Mozy, which automatically backs up my important documents, photos, and other files) The benefit of some of the cloud backup services is that they could also be used to backup pictures, documents, and any other electronic files you don't want to lose.
As for the software issue someone else asked about, I have no idea what format the Flip camera uses, so I can't offer any advice there. |
Anonymous
| Great advice -- thanks. |