How Much NAS Storage Do I Need for Video Editing?

The most common mistake editors make when buying a NAS is guessing the storage capacity they need. And guessing low. A 4-bay NAS with four 4TB drives sounds like plenty until you realise you shoot BRAW 3:1 on a government contract, retain footage for 24 months, and have three concurrent client projects. The calculation is not complicated, but it needs to be done before you buy hardware. This guide walks through it step by step: codec storage requirements, weekly footage volume, retention periods, the RAID factor, and how AU drive costs affect the total.

For a full overview covering hardware, setup, and workflow planning, see our complete NAS video editing guide.

Step 1. Know Your Codec (It Matters More Than Resolution)

Resolution (4K, 6K, 8K) affects storage, but codec affects it far more. A 4K H.264 file from a Sony A7 IV uses 25-50 GB per hour. A 4K ProRes 422 HQ file from the same shoot might use 200-400 GB per hour. Eight times more. Most editors working across multiple camera types, or who have recently upgraded cameras, significantly underestimate their per-hour footage volume because they are using the wrong codec as their mental benchmark.

The table below covers the codecs most common in Australian production. Blackmagic RAW (BRAW) is included separately by quality ratio because the difference between BRAW 12:1 and BRAW 3:1 is substantial and frequently misunderstood. Use this table as your starting estimate. Actual file sizes vary by camera model, scene complexity, and specific settings.

Step 2. Estimate Your Weekly Footage Intake

Your weekly footage volume depends on how much you shoot and at what codec. The simplest method: look at your last three months of projects and total the raw footage ingested. Divide by the number of weeks. This gives you a real-world baseline that accounts for variable shooting volumes across different project types.

If you are starting out or transitioning to a new camera system, use the codec table above and estimate shoot days per week. A wedding editor shooting one event per weekend at BRAW 12:1 on a BMPCC 6K might ingest 200-400 GB per week. A commercial production editor handling three shoot days per week at ProRes 422 HQ might ingest 2-5 TB per week. The range is wide. Do the calculation for your specific workflow rather than relying on generic estimates.

For drone operators, note that drone footage formats vary significantly by platform. DJI consumer and prosumer drones typically shoot H.264 or H.265 at 25-50 GB per hour, which is modest. However, government and commercial drone contracts often involve long flight times, multiple units, and high-altitude captures. The 20TB drone project that started as a typical hourly calculation is not unusual for a week-long capital city survey. At the larger scales, storage requirements multiply quickly and an undersized NAS becomes a project-stopper.

Step 3. Set Your Retention Period

Retention period has the largest single impact on total storage requirements, and it is the factor most editors either guess at or forget to calculate entirely.

Most editors hold footage across three layers simultaneously:

• Active projects. Footage in production right now. Typically 1-4 months of footage for a busy editor. This is your warm storage requirement.
• Recent archive. Completed projects from the last 12-18 months that you might reasonably be asked to revisit. This is the bulk of your cold storage requirement.
• Long-term retention. Footage held under contractual data retention obligations. If your contracts specify 24-month or 36-month retention windows, this becomes the largest component of your total storage needs over time.

A useful formula: Total NAS storage needed (raw) = (weekly footage intake) × (retention weeks) × (safety factor of 1.3 for headroom). Then apply the RAID factor (see Step 4).

For editors with data retention obligations, the long-term retention layer compounds over time. An editor retaining 2TB of footage per month under 24-month clauses accumulates 48TB of retention footage over two years. Before accounting for active projects. The data retention guide covers how to structure this as a billable service rather than absorbing it as overhead.

Step 4. Apply the RAID Factor

RAID reduces your usable capacity compared to raw drive capacity. This surprises editors who buy four 8TB drives expecting 32TB of usable storage and find they have significantly less.

• RAID 1 (2 drives): Usable = 50% of raw. Two 8TB drives = 8TB usable. Full drive redundancy. One drive can fail without data loss.
• RAID 5 (3+ drives): Usable = raw capacity minus one drive. Four 8TB drives = 24TB usable. One drive can fail without data loss.
• RAID 6 (4+ drives): Usable = raw capacity minus two drives. Four 8TB drives = 16TB usable. Two drives can fail simultaneously without data loss.
• JBOD / no RAID: Full capacity, no redundancy. Losing any drive means losing that footage. Not recommended for professional footage holding client data.

For video editing on a 4-bay NAS, RAID 5 is the most common configuration. It balances usable capacity against redundancy. Use the RAID Calculator to model specific drive configurations before committing to a purchase.

A Worked Example. Drone and Wedding Editor

To make this concrete: a freelance editor shooting weddings on weekends (BRAW 12:1 on a BMPCC 6K) and handling commercial drone work during the week (DJI H.264 4K), with 18-month retention on wedding footage and 12-month retention on commercial work.

Weekly footage intake:
One wedding per weekend at BRAW 12:1: ~300 GB
Two days commercial drone at H.264 4K: ~200 GB
Total weekly intake: ~500 GB (roughly 0.5 TB/week)

Retention calculation:
Wedding footage (78 weeks at 0.3 TB/week): ~23 TB
Commercial footage (52 weeks at 0.2 TB/week): ~10 TB
Active projects buffer (8 weeks): ~4 TB
Total raw footage: ~37 TB

With 30% headroom: ~48 TB raw capacity needed
In RAID 5 (four drives): 48 TB usable ÷ 0.75 RAID efficiency = ~64 TB raw drive capacity needed
Practical configuration: Four 16TB IronWolf drives (64TB raw, ~48TB usable in RAID 5)

This is a mid-range configuration. Not the entry-level 2-bay Synology DS223 often cited in general NAS content, which tops out at about 8TB usable in RAID 1. A working editor with meaningful retention obligations frequently needs a 4-bay minimum. Getting the sizing right before purchase is the difference between infrastructure that scales with your business and one you are replacing in 18 months.

What AU Drives Actually Cost Per TB

Australian pricing for NAS-rated drives from local retailers (Mwave, Scorptec, PLE) typically runs:

• 4TB IronWolf: AU$130-160
• 6TB IronWolf: AU$170-210
• 8TB IronWolf: AU$220-270
• 12TB IronWolf: AU$330-400
• 16TB IronWolf Pro: AU$500-600
• WD Red Pro equivalents: Typically 5-10% higher than IronWolf at equivalent capacity

Always verify current pricing before purchasing. Storage hardware prices shift regularly. Buying from an Australian retailer means Australian Consumer Law protections apply: if a drive fails within the warranty period, your claim is handled locally rather than through international RMA processes. For a professional storage setup, that matters. Pricing above is indicative as of early 2026; check Mwave, Scorptec, or PLE for current stock and pricing.

Per-Project Storage Costing for Client Quotes

Once you know your per-hour or per-shoot-day storage cost, you can calculate the real infrastructure cost of each project. And build it into quotes. If a 4TB IronWolf drive costs AU$150, your cost per TB of raw capacity is AU$37.50. At RAID 5 efficiency (75%), the cost per TB of usable storage is AU$50. A project generating 2TB of footage costs AU$100 in raw drive capacity to hold.

This is the calculation that makes the data retention billing conversation concrete. When you know your per-TB cost, you can set a per-project archive fee that recovers infrastructure costs without guesswork. It also helps with equipment planning: knowing that your current shooting volume requires you to purchase a new drive every three months gives you a predictable capital expenditure to include in business planning.

Related reading: our NAS buyer's guide.

Use our free Transfer Speed Estimator to estimate how long large transfers will take over your connection.

How much storage does 1 hour of 4K footage use?

It depends entirely on the codec. H.264 4K uses 25-50 GB per hour. ProRes 422 HQ 4K uses 200-400 GB per hour. Eight times more from a file size perspective despite the same resolution label. BRAW ranges from 25 GB per hour (12:1 compression) to 120 GB per hour (3:1). Always calculate using your actual codec, not just the resolution. The table above covers the codecs most common in Australian production.

Should I size for hot storage and cold storage separately?

For most solo and small-studio setups, a NAS with NVMe caching handles all tiers adequately. You size for total capacity and the NAS manages hot/warm/cold access automatically via the cache layer. Where separate sizing matters is if you are considering a local NVMe SSD for your editing workstation as the primary hot tier, with the NAS as warm and cold storage. In that case, size the NVMe SSD for your active project footprint (typically 2-4TB for current sequences), and the NAS for everything else. The hot and cold storage guide covers the architecture in detail.

How much extra capacity should I leave as headroom?

20-30% is the standard recommendation, and it matters more than most editors expect. NAS and RAID performance degrades noticeably when drives are above 80-85% full. Particularly for write operations during ingest. RAID rebuilds after a drive failure also slow significantly on near-full arrays, increasing your vulnerability window. Size for the capacity you need, then add 30% on top. The cost difference between the configuration that meets your current needs and one with 30% headroom is usually one additional drive. Worth it.

What RAID level should I use for professional video editing storage?

For a 4-bay NAS, RAID 5 is the standard recommendation: one drive's worth of parity data spread across all drives, allowing one drive to fail without data loss. For 2-bay units, RAID 1 (mirroring) is the only redundant option. And means 50% of raw capacity is usable. RAID 6 (two-drive failure tolerance) is appropriate for larger arrays (6+ drives) where rebuild times after a single failure become long enough that a second failure during rebuild is a real risk. JBOD (no RAID) is not recommended for footage under client or contractual obligations. Use the RAID Calculator to model usable capacity for any configuration.

How does BRAW compare to ProRes for storage requirements?

BRAW at its highest compression (12:1) uses roughly the same storage per hour as compressed H.264 4K. About 25-35 GB per hour. This is why BRAW has become popular in Australian production: it provides RAW colour latitude and grading flexibility at H.264-like file sizes at the compressed ratios. At lower compression ratios (3:1), BRAW files are 90-120 GB per hour. Closer to ProRes 422 territory. If you are sizing storage for a BRAW workflow, clarify which compression ratio you are using day-to-day; the difference in storage requirements over a year of shooting is substantial.

If you're still deciding on a brand, our Synology vs QNAP comparison guide breaks down which platform suits different use cases in Australia.

I am a drone pilot. How do I estimate storage needs for large contracts?

Consumer and prosumer DJI drone footage (H.264 or H.265 4K) generates 25-50 GB per flight hour. Modest by production standards. However, long commercial contracts involve many flight hours, often with multiple pilots and units. A week-long government infrastructure survey can generate 10-20TB of raw footage from a single platform. The safest approach for large drone contracts: estimate total planned flight hours, multiply by 50 GB per hour (conservative for H.265 4K), and add a 50% buffer for retakes, weather delays requiring additional captures, and any data retention obligations in the contract. Undersizing storage before a large contract is the most avoidable infrastructure failure in AU drone production.