A 120 TB, 8-bay hard disk dock with 10G Ethernet and no subscription fees? After six months of daily use, the Blackmagic Cloud Backup 8 has solved a real DaVinci Resolve storage headache.
If you work in high-end post-production, you already know the universal truth: storage is a nightmare. Which is a problem the Blackmagic Cloud Backup 8 was designed to solve.
My workflow is incredibly data-heavy. I shoot everything in RAW, process heavy EXR files for computer rendering, often taking a few days to render so you want EXR in case in falls over during the render, that way you still have usable files and can pick up where it let go.
Because we also do "super shoots", capturing often a week of content that is used in multiple films over several years, we come back with 25 TB or more from just a couple of days on set. Add in LIDAR, photogrammetry, Gaussian splats, HDR 360s, and multi-camera 4K and 8K RAW footage, and our data footprint is big. We need access to all of this info quickly and easily as we are always looking for new takes to use in new films. This gets very expensive if you are on RAID5.
For a long time, we relied on expensive cloud storage offerings, sometimes costing us upwards of £700 to £800 a month, especially if RAW started to get mixed in. Plus, cloud systems rarely play nice with EXR and DNG sequences. I needed a massive, cost-effective, and reliable local network storage solution that seamlessly integrated with DaVinci Resolve and had access to remote users.
After testing a loaner unit from Blackmagic, I finally found the answer: the $1755 Blackmagic Cloud Backup 8. Here are my thoughts after putting it through its paces. I have been using it for 6 months now so this was not a quick test.
The Blackmagic Cloud Backup 8 is an 8-bay hard disk dock designed to back up large media files to low-cost computer hard disks over a 10G Ethernet network. Rather than acting as a traditional RAID array, each of the 8 hard disk slots is totally independent.
For my setup, I populated four of the bays with 30 TB Seagate IronWolf Pro spinning disks, giving me a massive 120 TB of usable space. I personally find spinning disks to be more reliable for this kind of archiving than SSDs, which have fallen over on me multiple times. Because the slots act independently, you get the full capacity of the drives without losing space to RAID parity, and can mix sizes and drives.
A quick word on placement: This is a rack-mount unit built for a server room. With internal cooling fans and up to 8 spinning disks working simultaneously, it does have noise, so it's not really to be placed on your desk.
The Network Setup: Because I already have a fully wired 10G network in my space, I ran the unit directly through my Ubiquiti 10G switch. It handled the traffic flawlessly.
No Switch? No Problem: The brilliant part about this unit is that it has four 10G Ethernet ports built right into the back. This means that if you don't own an expensive 10G switch, you don't need to buy one. You can plug up to four computers directly into the Blackmagic unit and still get those blazing-fast transfer speeds.
Ultimate Cross-Platform File Sharing: I really need to highlight how incredibly well this device handles file sharing across different operating systems. It networked all of the drives across my entire ecosystem effortlessly. Whether I was working downstairs on my Mac or rendering upstairs on my PC, every single drive mounted perfectly. It completely breaks down the walls between macOS and Windows, turning all that raw storage into a universal, seamless file-sharing hub for everyone on the network.
Here is why they are the perfect fit for this setup:
They Handle Traffic Jams: When multiple video editors are pulling and saving massive files at the exact same time, regular hard drives can panic, freeze, or slow to a crawl. These drives are programmed to act like a traffic cop, keeping everything running smoothly so nobody experiences lag.
They Don't Shake to Death: Putting eight spinning disks right next to each other in one metal box creates a lot of physical vibration. Standard drives will literally rattle themselves to an early grave. The IronWolf drives have built-in sensors that detect and balance out this vibration, keeping them healthy and fast.
Built for Heavy Lifting: If you continuously copied giant video files to a standard home computer drive all day, it would quickly burn out. These drives are essentially the draft horses of the storage world, and are designed to work hard 24/7 without breaking a sweat.
A Built-in Safety Net: They constantly monitor their own health to warn you of potential issues before a failure happens. More importantly, they come with three years of professional data recovery services. If the worst does happen, Seagate has a 95% success rate of rescuing your files, which is a massive relief when you are storing irreplaceable footage.
Long-Term Durability: Because they are built from heavy-duty parts, they last significantly longer than standard hard drives and come with a 5-year regional warranty. You spend less time worrying about your gear and less money replacing broken equipment.
Ingest and Proxy Generation: We dump all of our RAW files, EXR sequences, and project files onto the Cloud Backup 8. DaVinci Resolve generates proxies directly onto the system.
Network Editing: Because the drives are shared so perfectly across Mac and PC, I could edit off these proxies over the 10G network. This gives me a complete workflow overview of all our RAW files, allowing us to easily flip through the massive library of proxies regardless of what machine I was sitting at.
Cloud Collaboration: For remote members, the Cloud Backup 8 syncs seamlessly with Blackmagic Cloud. When I dropped new footage into a folder, it automatically writes up to the cloud and syncs right back down to the other person at the other end. Depending on the sync settings that could include RAW files.
Hot-Swappable Project Management: Blackmagic makes sleeves for these drives, meaning you could dedicate one drive per project. If you want to load a specific project back in, you can simply hot-swap that drive right into the unit.
Final Grade Conform: When an edit is locked and it’s time for the final color grade, I gathered the project and moved only the necessary RAW footage off the Cloud Backup 8 and onto one of our ultra-fast RAID arrays. I then did the final grade entirely from the RAID.
You can plug the device directly into a monitor to get a live, graphical view of your storage operations. The interface is very clean. It shows a storage map of all your disks, with reads highlighted and writes clearly visible. You can see exactly which machines on the network are pulling data, track your network data rate graphs, and monitor your Cloud Sync status in real-time, also how the storage cells are being used.
Perhaps the biggest selling point for independent studios is the cost structure. The Blackmagic Cloud Backup 8 provides completely private storage with zero ongoing subscription costs and no monthly license fees.
By investing once in the $1755 hardware and high-capacity HDDs, I am saving a fortune compared to the £800-a-month cloud services I was using previously. I can then use much cheaper file-only cloud storage if I want an off site backup, or I could run another Backup 8 as a duplicate.
Drive Bays: 8 x independent 3.5" SATA hard disk slots.
Networking: 4 x 10G Ethernet ports (Built-in).
Monitoring: 1 x HDMI Output for a graphical interface.
Form Factor: 1RU Rack Mount Design.
The Blackmagic Cloud Backup 8 has fundamentally fixed my storage problems. It gives us a massive, expandable media library, seamless collaboration for remote users, total cross-platform freedom between our Macs and PCs, and eliminates monthly subscription fees. I was so impressed by the loaner unit that I have ordered one for myself. If you are dealing with large digital film files and heavy DaVinci Resolve workflows, this is easily one of the best investments you can make for your infrastructure.