Digital Storage

Flash Memory
In progress...

Save and Protect Your Footage
The Two Hard Drive Rule Your footage - both video and audio - is extremely important, obviously. Since hard drives often fail, or can be misplaced or broken if brought to set, it's always important to have the footage backed up on two hard drives.

Preferred Brands
GTECH is the preferred brand for now. Available at specialty retailers, it is known for its reliability and is typically the chosen hard drive manufacturer among editors. I'll check for a writeup on the subject later on though.

File Systems
When data is held on storage media, such as a hard drive or compact flash card, it is held in a specific file system. For more: File System

FAT32
The OG. Been largely replaced by NTFS on Windows computers and Apple's file systems on Macs for Hard Drives. Flash memory used in cameras generally use this file structure however - that's why you end up with a 4gb limit on clips. FAT32 is notorious for not being able handle file sizes larger than 4gb.

Wikipedia writeup: FAT32

NTFS
Here's the Wikipedia writeup on NTFS

But let's cut to the chase. This is the current preferred Windows file system format. It works well and is the format many new hard drives come in by default. While the older file system Windows used, FAT32, played well with Macs, NTFS isn't as friendly out of the box. You'll soon notice you're able to read NTFS drives on a Mac, but not write to them. There's a solution for that however.

If you are using a Mac, you'll want to download the following driver, which is supported by Apple itself:

NTFS-3G

This driver, after proper installation and a computer reboot, will allow your Mac to both read and write to NTFS-formatted hard drives.