Storage Solutions Week

by David Adler ·Posted 09/15/2017
To record, edit, or do just about anything with digital video, you need adequate storage space to store your video files. However, stating this obvious truth doesn’t really help anyone, does it? You may be asking yourself, “How much storage do I need on my drives?” Or, “Is any old hard drive good enough for playing back my video files?” For the TL;DR folks out there, the answers are “a reasonable amount” and “not necessarily,” respectively. If that’s not enough information, read on! I’m going to discuss computer-connected video storage in
by M. Brett Smith ·Posted 09/13/2017
With everything that goes into capturing aerial footage—type of drone, camera setup, lens configuration, etc.—it’s easy to overlook one of the simplest but most crucial components of the recording process: storage. And while not as varied as drones themselves, the solutions for saving all your flying footage are sundry, and require careful consideration. To help decide which solution is right for you, we’ve selected five great options to choose from, with some helpful use-cases thrown in. Be sure to read all the way to the bottom, as we’ve
by William Min ·Posted 08/29/2018
Have you noticed your computer being slower than usual? Before you use this as an excuse to purchase a new laptop (we know it’s tempting), you might want to opt for a more cost-effective approach, which is cleaning out the hard drive (HDD). In a few simple steps, you can analyze and clean out your HDD to free up valuable storage space. Defragging your old HDD and properly formatting newly-installed SSDs will ensure that your computer doesn’t become bloated or sluggish. Always Back up Your Data First Before you start doing anything to your hard
by William Min ·Posted 09/08/2017
So, you’re in the market for a solid-state drive? Are you looking for a 2.5" SATA III SSD or a M.2 NVMe PCIe 3.0 x4 SSD? If that sentence confused the heck out of you, you should probably keep reading. 2.5" Form Factor There’s nothing wrong with running an old school 3.5" HDD (hard disk drive) in your desktop computer… if you don’t mind looking at the Windows
by Patrick Chiang ·Posted 09/06/2017
When buying a desktop computer, how much thought do you put into its storage capacity? How much do you think you can store, and how long can get by with just a 1TB hard drive? At first, it always seems plenty, but once we start saving photos, videos, movies, games, and more, we find ourselves in a predicament. There’s still so much Internet and life we want to download and keep, but that red bar slowly creeping to the edge has got us all feeling anxious. Most people opt for an external storage solution, which is important for backups, but what
by Phillip Nichol… ·Posted 09/06/2017
When people record live concerts and studio productions, multi-track recording is ideal. It grants you the power to fix and mix the performances in ways that would not be possible if only a stereo mix was recorded. However, multi-track creates a large amount of data in a hurry. Your recorder’s drive needs to be able to handle the burden imposed by writing and reading a multitude of large, uncompressed audio files simultaneously. There are several important factors to consider when shopping for a suitable drive: speed, durability, compatible
by Phillip Nichol… ·Posted 08/20/2018
If you make music, you know that you can’t control when your creativity flashes into existence. Thankfully, the ability to follow the meandering muse is becoming easier and easier via increasingly powerful smartphones, tablets, and user-friendly production apps. With the portable power they give, you can be on a plane or in a train making music and stacking tracks instead of just sitting there being angry that your inspiration lacks the consideration to be well-timed. So, let’s say that you’ve got these musical ideas in your phone or tablet
by Jason T ·Posted 08/25/2016
When I started getting into MIDI-based music production in the early 2000s, most people agreed that hardware still had a clear edge over software-based setups. Back then, most serious urban and dance producers were making music with hardware drum machines and keyboard workstations, then tracking everything to a computer running a DAW. Like many others, I started with an Akai MPC 2000xl, which was one of the drum-programming staples of the time. I added a Yamaha Motif ES, BOSS SP-303 (aka the “Dr. Sample”) and a Microkorg into the mix. Over the
by Max Waldroop ·Posted 09/07/2017
We’ve all been there. “Storage almost full.” “Not enough storage available.” “Cannot Take Photo.” “Storage space running out.” No matter how your smartphone chooses to articulate it, the meaning’s the same: your shiny connected companion is full to the point of bursting, with nary a megabyte to spare for a low-res photo or simple app. The truth is, while our devices have gotten higher-resolution cameras, bigger operating systems, and more complex apps, the amount of storage included has stayed relatively static. And if your handset of choice
by John-Paul Pale… ·Posted 08/29/2019
It’s safe to say that in today’s predominantly digital world, memory cards have overtaken film as the primary recording media for consumer and professional photo and video use. Just as analog cameras were designed to work with a specific film format, such as 35mm or 120 roll film, or large-format sheet film, digital cameras are likewise built to work with one or two specific memory card formats. However, once you’ve established which memory card format is compatible with your camera, such as CompactFlash (CF), Secure Digital (SD), XQD, or
by Tim Chan ·Posted 09/08/2017
How do you treat your portable drive that holds irreplaceable data? If it’s not well, durability should be an important factor when choosing a suitable storage solution. Another important decision is the type of drive that can either provide ample storage space with a hard disc drive or lightning-fast access to files using an SSD. Of the two drive types, hard drives are more susceptible to failures since they retrieve data with a spinning platter-and-head design. Excess vibrations or drops can cause irreparable data loss—when the read-and-
by Rebecca Melville ·Posted 03/25/2021
If you work with libraries of large image files, or in audio or video production, you need to be selective about your external hard drive. Reading and writing files directly to or from an external drive can incur some hefty performance demands, so it's best to determine your needs before you buy a drive. With the ever-increasing data-transfer demands brought on by more megapixels, higher audio bit rates, and higher-resolution video, keeping up with all of that data can be a burden. The first thing to determine must be how much overall storage
by Chris Goldin ·Posted 05/06/2014
  Video editing is one of the most demanding tasks you can execute on a computer. A modern video-editing program such as Adobe Premiere requires high performance from the processor, RAM memory, GPU (if using GPU acceleration), as well as storage drives. Choosing a fast storage solution can be a little tougher than picking the fastest computer processor, as there are more tradeoffs involved. The largest drives aren’t always the