how to back up family videos, before the next device fails.

photos tend to get gathered up eventually. videos are easier to leave behind. they're big, so they fill up phones and get moved off in a hurry. they come from more kinds of devices: phones, camcorders, old point-and-shoots, discs someone burned years ago. and they're harder to glance through, so it's easy to lose track of what's where.

the good news is that backing them up is mostly patient copying. nothing here needs special skills. it needs one place to put things, a little room, and the habit of checking before you trust a copy.

before you start

• plan for more space than photos. a few minutes of phone video can take as much room as hundreds of pictures, and newer phones that record in 4k use even more. an external drive with plenty of free space is usually the easiest home.
• one folder per source. make a top folder like family videos, then one folder inside for each place you copy from: dad's old phone, camcorder card, 2012, wedding dvd. plain names you'll still understand in ten years.
• copy, never move. leave everything on the original device until your copy is checked and backed up a second time.

step 1: make a list of where videos live

before copying anything, take a quiet ten minutes and write down every place you can think of. most families find videos in more places than they expect:

• phones, the ones in use and the ones in a drawer. getting photos off an old phone works the same way for videos.
• camcorders and cameras, and the memory cards still inside them.
• discs. dvds from a wedding, a school play, or a camcorder that recorded straight to disc.
• old computers and drives. a laptop that hasn't been switched on in years, or a hard drive in the closet.
• online accounts. google photos, icloud and facebook often hold videos too, and their exports bring them home along with the pictures.

the list matters more than it looks. it tells you when you're done, and it stops one source quietly getting forgotten.

step 2: copy the originals, not the shared versions

the same video often exists in several copies: the original on the phone that recorded it, a version sent in a group chat, another posted online. the original is almost always the best one. messaging apps and social sites usually shrink videos to send them quickly, so the shared copy can look softer and sound flatter.

when you have a choice, copy from the device that recorded it. if the only copy left is the one someone sent you, keep that one. a smaller video is far better than none.

step 3: copy camcorder cards whole

many camcorders don't save videos as simple single files. some store them inside a set of nested folders, with clips split into pieces and small companion files that hold details like the date. if you pick out only the video files, some programs won't open them properly afterwards, or the clips lose their dates.

the safe approach is simple: put the card in a card reader, open it on your computer, and copy everything on it, every folder, into that card's own folder. don't rename or rearrange anything inside. you can always make watchable copies later; the untouched original is what you're protecting.

step 4: copy discs while they still read

discs you burned yourself don't last forever, and older ones can become hard to read over time. if a disc still plays, now is a good time to copy it.

• find a drive. most new computers don't have one, but an inexpensive external usb dvd drive does the job.
• copy the whole disc. a disc made for a dvd player keeps its video in a folder called VIDEO_TS. copy that folder, and anything else on the disc, into the disc's own folder.
• if a disc struggles, stop and set it aside rather than trying again and again. try it later in a different drive. a careful local repair or transfer shop can help with the stubborn ones.

tapes, like vhs or the small tapes older camcorders used, are a different job: they need to be played back and recorded into a computer, or sent to a transfer service. once they come back as files, they join everything else here.

step 5: check before you trust it

• play a few from each folder. pick clips from the start, middle and end of each source and play them all the way through, with sound.
• compare the counts. the number of files in your copy should match the source. a big gap usually means a copy stopped partway.
• tick it off your list. only cross out a source once its copy plays.

keep it in more than one place

one copy on one drive is still one accident away from gone. a long-standing rule of thumb among people who look after important files is called 3-2-1: keep three copies, on at least two different kinds of storage, with one of them somewhere other than your home.

for a family, that can be as simple as the external drive, a second drive kept at a relative's house, and a private online copy. what matters is that no single fire, flood, theft or failed drive can take everything at once.

keeping the dates

most phones and cameras write the date a video was recorded inside the file itself. copying files usually keeps that information, but tidying up can lose it. a few habits help:

• don't convert yet. changing videos into another format can strip out the recording date. keep the originals as they are, and make converted copies separately if you need them.
• keep the companion files. small files that sit next to videos, especially on camcorder cards and in online exports, often hold the dates. leave them alone.
• let folder names carry clues. camcorder card, 2012 is a useful hint later if a file's date ever goes missing.

then put it all in order

once every source has its own checked folder, the next step is bringing photos and videos together by when they happened. how to organize old digital photos, by when they happened walks through it, and the same approach works for videos.

where treasure box fits

treasure box is the private life archive we're building for this moment, when videos and photos from phones, cameras, discs and old accounts finally come together. you bring them in from your browser, it reads the date each one was recorded, and it lays them out on one private timeline, so the video of a first birthday sits right next to the pictures from that same afternoon. it tells you when your files are safely stored, and you can take a full copy out anytime.

if that sounds like a good home for your family's videos, see how treasure box works or read our privacy promises.

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