Nino Leitner

If there is a downside to portable backup drives, it’s that they tend to trade backup safety for convenience. In a time when the industry is moving from 2K formats to 4K, 6K and higher⁠—⁠and the added data load of 8⁠-⁠bit to 12-bit and more — some other backup drives often lack the throughput necessary to handle the higher bitrates of these latest formats.

"On a job, if I’m shooting something like the Alexa or RED that needs more speed than what a normal drive can handle, I use G-Technology’s G-SPEED Shuttle SSD,” says Leitner. “I love that drive for editing. Not in the field, because it needs power—but in a hotel? You can really throw huge amounts of data on that. On the recent music video shoots, it literally saved our butts because without it, our digital imaging technician would still be sitting there copying data to USB drives two weeks after the shoot."

The G⁠-⁠DRIVE Mobile Pro SSD, the G⁠-⁠Drive Pro SSD and G-SPEED Shuttle SSD with Thunderbolt 3 are sufficient to cover most of Leitner’s storage needs in the field. Back in his office, where the heaviest data lifting comes into play, Leitner is now setting up a G⁠-⁠Technology G-SPEED Shuttle XL with 64TB. In a backup capacity, that bandwidth can also mean the difference between high on-site productivity and a terrible experience fraught with errors.

"Frequently, after the shoot," he adds, "you end up with so much data that you sit there for hours and hours backing up. It’s already 1:00, 2:00 in the morning and you have to get up at 5:00 or 6:00 again. You’re like, ‘If I didn’t have to use a slow HDD, it would save me so much time and make life so much easier!’ That happens all the time, and that’s where I really enjoy using G-Technology drives equipped with SSDs, especially the Thunderbolt 3 versions. It makes a lot of difference if you’re sitting there after the shoot for only half an hour instead of two hours."

"Like many others, I’ve gone through a lot of different manufacturers of hard disks," he says. "If you think about it, your storage is one of the most important things you can have on a shoot. One of our problems is that we don’t use tapes anymore, so we don’t have a proper archiving medium. All we can do is get the best hard drives out there. So far, I think G-Technology drives are the most reliable. I couldn’t say that about some of the other manufacturers."

Leitner emphasizes that support is another key factor behind his G⁠⁠-⁠⁠Technology preference. In addition to the company focusing its products on creative professionals, G⁠-⁠Technology also makes sure that its support staff are both knowledgeable and accessible from a broad number of locations around the world." You actually have people to talk to if there is a problem. G-Tech is the only one that seems to make a real effort in that regard."

This support has been instrumental in helping Leitner to balance the freedom of digital cinematography with the more challenging aspects of digital archiving. Vendors toss around the term "partner" so much that it tends to make the word weak and ambiguous, but Leitner does see G-Technology as an important partner in his creative operations. His craft and imagination may drive his career forward, but the strength of his storage keeps him on a stable course.