Backing Up Your Files - Just Do It!
Once you have produced your final, best quality video, make sure that you back it up. You do this for two reasons.
1. You may lose the streaming file that you uploaded. Your web hosts computers may crash because of mechanical failure, virus/malware infection, or be deleted because someone forgot to renew the contract.
2. Digital video started in 1986. Since then dozens of formats/codecs have been produced and used. New formats are most certainly to be used in the future. Some of these may replace what is used now.
If you have not saved the highest quality edition of your finished video you will have to go back to the files or tapes you saved and put it together again and produce it again. If you have saved it, you can open up an editing program or converter program and quickly produce another copy or new copy in a new format.
Best practice: Back it up to two external hard drives. Label one file nameoffile_bkup1.* and on the other nameoffile_bkup2.* (where * is the format your file has been produced in e.g. .mov or .mpg)
Why not DVD's or CDs?
Those who work with computers a lot are finding that these disc media do not last nearly as long as manufacturers were claiming.
Why more than one external hard drive?
These fail, too!
What about the "raw" file that was downloaded from the video camera or the video camera tape, memory card, or dvd...the file I started with.
Saving this file is up to you. If you choose to do so, use nothing but a hard drive. Video at Standard Definition takes 13 Gigabytes per hour of hard drive space. High Definition video takes much, much more.