Ryan dropped these off with us while he was out of town.
It's about 19TB (that's terabytes) of footage nestled in a little custom fit waterproof, shockproof Pelican case. And 19TB is a lot - there are dozens and dozens of projects in here.
One of the things I never really thought about before we got too deep into this video production game was how you store, backup and transport all of the footage in a way that's safe and somewhat organized. It can be a major headache.
The data on these hard drives means everything. Without them, there can be no projects, no videos, etc. Bottom line, there'd be a lot of frowning people around if something happened to all of this stuff. We go through great lengths to be extra careful about handling it and backing it all up. And then consider this, the bigger the project, the more elaborate the production, the more valuable the footage becomes - the more nervous I get about the whole situation.
For example, when we were in Mexico for 10 days, we downloaded all of the footage - audio, video and GoPro stuff - to a portable 1TB drive that we named 'DUCATI MEXICO 1'. Each day we backed up all of that footage to a larger powered 3TB drive aptly named 'DUCATI MEXICO BIG DOG'. During the days, we kept the 2 drives in separate suitcases and in separate cars whenever possible. By the time we got to the last couple days of the trip we made yet a third copy of everything - hundreds of GB of data by that time. When we left the hotel, we would hide the third copy in a separate hotel room on a separate floor than the others - just in case.
We even brought extra blank hard drives with us - just as standby substitutes in the event of a hard drive emergency. That's usually not necessary, because there's a Best Buy around every corner, but it was Mexico so we had to be way over prepared.
It's weird. It seems paranoid, I know, but you sort of have to be that way in order to be safe. You don't want to lose the data. Trust me.
Back your stuff up everybody. And hide the copy safely. You'll thank me later.
