Using a file system to archive your material provides the quickest method of archiving and restoring your material, and offers full support for mixed-resolution projects.

However, archiving large projects may require a significant amount of local or networked storage hardware. As the storage hardware features and capabilities evolve, using external USB 2.0/FireWire^® (IEEE 1394) hard drives offers a cheap alternative for archiving projects. These devices can be formatted as ext2, ext3, or Mac® file systems. NTFS is not supported. External USB 2.0/FireWire devices can be used.