It may no longer offer free unlimited storage, but Google Drive is still one of the easiest ways to back up your data, including documents, photos, or videos. Almost everyone has a Google account and it makes it easy to save and share essentially anything. I tend to need a place to quickly backup photos and videos I am working on or just an easy way to share clips with my production partners.
Google Drive overview
Google Drive is one of the best and most user-friendly tools on the market. The process of backing up your video files is quick, easy, and painless, but keep in mind the speed of your upload is dependent on your internet speeds. So if you’re backing up a large file make sure you are on the fastest network possible or have the time to wait for it to upload. If you’re going to use Google Drive to back up video footage regularly you will need to be cognizant of the fact that video files tend to be large, so if you aren’t already paying for a Google Drive storage plan (opens in new tab), you will need to select one, they start as low $1.99 a month for 100GB and scale all the way up to 30TB for $149 a month. Most video folks like to back up to a portable hard drive, but in a pinch, backing up to Google Drive is a solid option because you can back up uncompressed video files. However, I do highly recommend always having a portable SSD handy. Check out our best portable SSDs for content creators in 2022, to see some of the drives we recommend after use and testing.
How to upload videos to Google Drive
- Open the Google Drive app and locate the folder where you’d like to upload the video.
- Browse your laptop, phone or tablet for the video you would like to upload.
- Drag the video to the Google Drive folder. A progress box on the lower right side of your screen will track the upload.
- Wait for the progress box to confirm that the video is finished uploading. Most times it will take Google Drive a few more minutes to have your videos ready for viewing. However, those you share it with will immediately have the option to download the video to their hard drive. That’s it, how painless was that? Keep creating content and always remember to backup!
