Backup Like Your Life Depends on It (Because It Does)

Picture this: You’re almost 3/4 through an edit, everything’s flowing, your cuts are crisp, your timing is perfect—and then disaster strikes.

Your hard drive fails. Your project file gets corrupted. Your cat decides your keyboard is the perfect place to practice parkour. Mercury is in retrograde, and suddenly, you’re questioning all your life choices.

We’ve all been there. And if you haven’t, you will. The only way to survive in this wild world of post-production is to follow one simple mantra: Backup. Everything. Always.

Technical Problems Are Not a Moral Failing

Listen, stuff breaks. Files get corrupted. Software crashes. None of this makes you a bad editor. It just makes you...an editor. If anything, the longer you’ve been in the game, the more disaster stories you’ll collect. The important thing isn’t avoiding problems altogether (because, spoiler alert: you can’t), it’s knowing how to recover quickly and efficiently. That’s where a good backup system saves the day.

The Backup Trifecta

If you only take one thing from this blog, let it be this: A file doesn’t exist unless it’s in three places.

The main working drive (where you edit)
A backup drive (an external or RAID system)
The cloud (Google Drive, Dropbox, Frame.io, your email, whatever works)

Live by the Backup Trifecta, and you’ll never lose sleep (or an entire project).

Where and How to Save Like a Pro

Project Files: I keep mine in a dedicated folder inside my main project folder. Every so often, I’ll email myself a copy because…Gmail is forever…(cue dystopian montage here)
Footage: On an external SSD or RAID, because working off your internal drive is a one-way ticket to Heartbreak Hotel.
Auto-Saves & Versions: Set your editing software to auto-save every few minutes. Premiere, my current editing software of choice, automatically creates and fills a folder with autosaves in my main project folder.

When Disaster Strikes (and eventually it will)

Stay calm. Take deep breaths. Cry if you need to (I highly recommend this step).
Check your auto-saves. Premiere, DaVinci, Avid—these programs have your back.
Look for previous versions. Did you email yourself the project file? Check your cloud storage. Dig into that external drive you meant to back up to.

Final Thoughts: Future You Will Thank You

Right now, while you’re reading this, take five minutes to back something up. A project file, some footage, your soul—whatever needs safeguarding. Because the only thing worse than losing a project is knowing it could’ve been avoided with just a little extra effort.

Backup early. Backup often. Backup like the anxious, paranoid editor you were meant to be.