Opening a Window to the Past

Is there value to a photograph that no one has ever seen? Levi Bettwieser, founder of The Rescued Film Project, has set out to answer that question. A film technician by trade, he would often find undeveloped film and loose film rolls when shopping at thrift stores. As he began to amass a collection of photos, he started putting them online. What really kick-started the project was a viral video detailing his process of restoring more than 30 rolls of film that were shot by an American soldier during World War II.

Since then, people following the project on social media have donated thousands of rolls of undeveloped film. Working with Seagate, The Rescued Film Project has doubled the volume of photos that they can process. This has let them expand the scope of the project and to preserve, safeguard and share the memories of thousands more people.

“Seagate has made it possible for me to preserve thousands of lost and forgotten moments that otherwise would have faded away with time, never to be seen by anyone.” – Levi Bettwieser, founder, The Rescued Film Project "

A Tidal Wave of Data

A Tidal Wave of Data

Dealing with large files of up to a gigabyte each meant that The Rescued Film Project needed a fast and high-capacity storage solution. In addition, this product would have to provide an automatic backup process for preserving and protecting the growing library of photos.

Faster Results, All-Points Security

Seagate worked with The Rescued Film Project to build a server that could share data with multiple computers. Due to the large file sizes that they work with, this solution focused on speed and convenient remote access, which allowed offsite volunteers to lend a hand.

Since the server makes use of Seagate’s easy-to-use RAID technology, The Rescued Film Project’s data is protected even if an individual drive fails. In addition, they’re using Seagate’s automatic cloud backup. This means that The Rescued Film Project has the best of both worlds: fast local backups with ample room for all of their work and offsite backups for complete data security.

Faster Results, All-Points Security

Unearthing the Forgotten Past

With this new storage and data solution, The Rescued Film Project has doubled the speed at which they can process the film, allowing them to tackle a months-long backlog. And with the extra time they’re saving, they now have the time to expand the project in other ways.

See how you can help. Contribute film or donate here.

How We Did It


In the Studio

Seagate deployed a 20TB 4-bay NAS PRO to accelerate file transfers, centralize photo storage and make them available remotely.


Around the World

Local NAS storage gives The Rescued Film Project fast backup capabilities, while Seagate’s Evault Cloud Backup Service provides automatic offsite backup.


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