How do you backup files in the field (traveling abroad) ???

How do you guys backup your video files in the field in a cost effective but most importantly timely fashion???

Also, especially when traveling abroad, do you always leave with a minimum of 2 copies of your footage on disk?

I'm traveling to Honduras, and I'll be recording to external SSD drives and CFast 2.0 (USB 3.0).

Looking to hear your insight on how you go about this...thank you.

On an overseas trip last year I brought a small laptop with Resolve installed and an external hard drive. After each day's shoot, I used Resolve's Clone Tool to copy (with checksum) the files from my SD cards to the external hard drive. I'm still using the Micro Cinema Camera, which records to SD cards. I actually had enough SD cards that I didn't have to reuse any of them so I had the originals on the SD cards and the backups on the hard disk. If I had to reformat the SD cards after each shoot I would have brought a second hard drive so I'd have two copies of everything. Or I would have kept backups of everything on the external hard drive and copies of the best takes on the internal drive of the laptop (assuming copious space available on the laptop, which isn't always realistic).

I use the Clone Tool rather than drag-and-drop, because it gives me the peace of mind that all my files copied correctly. Video files can be huge, and with files that size there's always a small risk of copy errors and you don't want to discover those after you've reformatted your original media. The downside is time; it takes longer to copy via the Clone Tool (or Shotput or Carbon Copy Cloner or any other checksum file cloning app). But charging batteries takes a long time too. I think my days worked out to maybe 2 hours of actual shooting followed by 4-5 hours of charging batteries, copying files, and entering metadata.

I think my days worked out to maybe 2 hours of actual shooting followed by 4-5 hours of charging batteries, copying files, and entering metadata.

I like this idea of using one’s NLE to enter metadata right after shooting and before copying. Takes discipline, but probably saves time later. If the bar is beckoning, it’s also virtuous :)

I wonder whether using Terminal and the command “rsync”, directly or via something like Carbon Copy Cloner, would be faster than copying/verifying via Resolve.

https://eu.gnarbox.com/products/gnarbox-2-0-ssd

How do you guys backup your video files in the field in a cost effective but most importantly timely fashion???

Also, especially when traveling abroad, do you always leave with a minimum of 2 copies of your footage on disk?

I'm traveling to Honduras, and I'll be recording to external SSD drives and CFast 2.0 (USB 3.0).

Looking to hear your insight on how you go about this...thank you.

What you're asking about is called a "break" - where you back off drives for post and for yourself and DIT to make dailies. Best idea is to use multiple spindle drives or cheap SSD enclosures and duplicate everything, and also put the drives into cases. There is some custom tailored software that checksums your copied footage :EDIT: Like ShotPut Pro :EDIT:, so there is some value in it - however I found Mac OS/Windows/Linux internal copies to be sufficient - the drives in your toolchain must travel separately, some you ship via FedEX, the others you walk out of country yourself in carryon. Samsung EVO's are on a steep sale - like around $90 per 1TB. Their seq write times are faster than HGST raid or anything similar, just depends on what volume of footage you're going to be doing per day. But do make it a habit to do this. Just remember that customs has a right to copy all your digital media when crossing a border for no reason at all.