What To Do With Old Files

As another LP of mine comes to a close, I’m starting to run into a problem. Videos take up a ton of space. Like a ton. Enough so that I’m now reaching the max on my external hard drive I’ve been using to store my completed lets plays. All I’m really saving is the final exported video and the thumbnails. Mostly because you never know when a new video service is going to come along and I’ll want to move everything to the new site.

So I’m just wondering. Aside from just getting another hard drive, what are some options to save space? Would compressing the folders be an issue in the long run? I’ve never been one to compress files before so I don’t know if it would have negative effects. I’m mostly curious on what others do with their completed LP files and what a good way to go about storing things is.

Video does not compress well, at all, it’s not really worth doing.

Pound for pound, no storage is going to be as affordable as just buying a couple terabytes of hard drive space, imo, and there’s not really anything to do to the files otherwise that will cut down on space aside from making lower-quality encodes.