A warning at 94 percent
The shared NAS the editors work from sends its weekly warning: nearly full. A new shoot is coming in on Monday with several terabytes of footage. The head of post opens the top-level folders. There are project folders from three years ago, folders named after clients rather than jobs, a folder called DO NOT DELETE, render caches from Premiere and DaVinci Resolve nobody has cleared, and at least two copies of the same drone footage.
She asks the editors what can go. Each is sure their current project must stay and not sure about anything else. On Monday, footage is offloaded to a USB drive on someone's desk instead, which is exactly the kind of workaround that loses footage.
Why fast storage fills with the wrong things
- Nothing marks a project as finished, so finished projects never leave.
- Folder names do not match job numbers, so ownership is unclear.
- Render caches, proxies and previews grow silently and are never cleared.
- The same media is copied into several project folders.
- Archiving feels risky, because nobody is sure the archive copy is complete.
The underlying storage choices, such as your NAS, a shared cloud workspace like LucidLink, LTO tape or cloud cold storage like Backblaze B2 or AWS S3 Glacier, stay yours. The problem is almost always the lack of a record of what is where and whether it can move.
What a full NAS costs
Editors lose time waiting, clearing space or working from slow external drives. Workarounds scatter footage onto desks, which is how it gets lost. Buying more storage fixes it for a while, at a price, and the same problem comes back. And the risk of someone deleting the wrong thing in a hurry is real.
How we build the storage view and archive step
- We scan the shared storage and list every top-level folder with its size, age and last modified date.
- Each folder is linked to a job in your project list or job system, with a status: in production, delivered, awaiting sign-off, finished.
- Render caches, proxies and preview files are identified by type and location, and shown separately, since most can be regenerated.
- Duplicate media across projects is found by file size and checksum, and listed for a person to decide on.
- When a project is marked finished, an archive step copies it to your chosen archive storage, verifies every file by checksum, records where it went, and only then offers to remove it from the NAS.
- A dashboard shows space used by status, so the head of post can see how much is taken by finished work and caches.
| Content | Usually | Action |
|---|---|---|
| Active project media | Needed | Stays on the NAS |
| Render caches and previews | Regenerable | Cleared on request |
| Proxies for finished projects | Regenerable | Cleared after archive |
| Finished projects | Needed rarely | Verified archive, then removed |
| Duplicate media | Depends | Listed for a person to decide |
Nothing is deleted automatically. Every removal comes after a verified archive copy and a confirmation from a named person.
A normal month afterwards
When a job is signed off and invoiced, its status changes to finished and the archive step runs overnight. The next morning, the head of post sees a verified archive report and confirms the removal. Caches for finished projects are cleared at the same time.
The NAS stays with room to spare for new shoots, and when it does get tight, the dashboard shows exactly which projects are candidates, with owners to ask. Editors stop parking footage on USB drives because there is no longer a reason to.
The old folders get sorted too, gradually. Each unlinked folder shows on a list until someone attaches it to a job or confirms it is nobody's, so the mystery folders from three years ago are finally dealt with, one at a time.
Is your storage like this?
- The shared NAS is always nearly full.
- Finished projects stay on fast storage for years.
- Nobody clears render caches.
- Footage ends up on external drives on desks.
- Nobody is confident that archive copies are complete.