The Cheapest Way to Archive Video Footage (2026)

If you shoot video for a living, you probably have a pile of old footage. You don't look at it much, but you really don't want to lose it. The good news is that keeping it safe doesn't have to cost much. For most people, the cheapest setup that's still safe is two hard drives at home plus one copy in cheap cloud storage.

Below I'll walk through the main options, what they really cost, and a few gotchas that can turn a cheap plan into an expensive one.

First, what counts as an archive?

An archive is the stuff you need to keep but hardly ever open. Think wrapped projects, camera originals and old reels. That's different from the drives you're editing off right now. It's also different from wherever you share videos with clients.

A good rule to follow is called 3-2-1. Keep three copies of your footage, on two different kinds of storage, with one copy somewhere other than your home or office. One drive sitting on a shelf isn't really an archive. If it gets dropped, or just stops working one day, that footage is gone.

Here's the upside. Since you rarely open your archive, it's okay if getting files back is a bit slow. That's where most of the savings come from.

Your options, side by side

Here's how the main choices compare. Cloud "cold storage" costs the least month to month. Hard drives cost the least up front. Tape is really only worth it if you have a huge library.

I checked these prices in September 2026. Cloud prices are the listed prices for US regions, so yours might be a little different.

What you'd pay over five years

Monthly prices are hard to picture, so here's what one copy would cost over five years. For a 10 TB library, Glacier Deep Archive comes to about $600. Backblaze B2 comes to about $4,200. Tape doesn't start to make sense until you're well past 40 TB.

These numbers only cover storage, not the cost of getting your files back out. I'll get to that next. The hard drive numbers assume you buy your drives once. Drives only come in certain sizes, so with a small library you'll pay for some empty space.

Want your own numbers? Use the archive cost calculator.

Watch out for the cost of getting it back

Some of the cheapest storage gets pricey when you want your files back. Here's what I'd check before you pick one:

• Downloading from Deep Archive costs a lot more than storing there. Pulling files out of storage is cheap, about $2.50 per TB if you're okay waiting. But AWS also charges to send data out to the internet, roughly $90 per TB at list prices. So getting a 10 TB library back could run around $900. That's more than five years of storing it.
• Some storage has a minimum time. Deep Archive charges you for at least 180 days per file, and R2 Infrequent Access for at least 30. If you delete something early, you still pay for the full time.
• Drives can die just sitting there. A drive left on a shelf for a few years might not start up when you need it. Plug your archive drives in about once a year and make sure the files still open.
• Deep Archive is slow. Getting files back takes 12 to 48 hours. That's fine for an old project, but not if a client needs a file this afternoon.

My rule of thumb: only use the cheapest storage for the copy you hope you'll never need, and keep a faster copy somewhere else.

Put a time limit in your contracts

Here's something a lot of DPs skip: telling clients how long you'll keep their footage. If your contract doesn't say, a client might come back years later expecting you still have everything. If you don't, that can turn into an awkward talk, or even a fight about who's responsible.

A short retention clause fixes this. It tells the client how long you'll hold the footage after a job wraps, and what happens after that. It also helps you plan storage, because you'll know when you can safely clear old projects out.

A simple version might look like this:

We'll keep the raw footage and project files for [12] months after final delivery. After that, we may delete them. If you'd like us to keep them longer, we can store them for a yearly fee, or hand them over to you on a drive.

A few tips:

• Pick a time you can really stick to. Six to twelve months after delivery is common. Keep your final exports longer than your raw footage.
• Give clients a way to keep things longer. A paid "extended storage" option is fair and can bring in a little extra money.
• Send a heads-up before you delete anything. A quick email 30 days out saves a lot of trouble.
• Have a lawyer look over the final wording. This is a starting point, not legal advice.

Keeping track of these dates across a lot of projects gets messy. That's one of the things I help with: tracking when each project's time runs out, sending reminders, and moving footage to cheaper storage or handing it off when it's due.

What I'd recommend

If your library is under 5 TB, Deep Archive only saves you a few dollars a month. At that size, I think it's worth paying a little more for storage you can get to right away, with simple pricing.

Not sure what’s right for you?

If you'd like a second opinion, send me your setup and I'll help you figure it out. The storage audit is free. I'll compare what you pay now with what owning your archive would cost, using your real numbers. Get a free storage audit →

Sources

• Backblaze B2 pricing
• Cloudflare R2 pricing
• Wasabi pricing
• Amazon S3 pricing
• Glacier Deep Archive pricing guide (usage.ai)
• LTO tape price tracker 2026 (tapebackup.org)
• 20TB hard drive prices 2026 (datacenterdisk.com)