External Storage?

[etg888]

Hello,

I've really just started producing using my laptop so I don't really have that many projects yet, but I know that as time goes on and I have more projects I'm going to need to store them somewhere other than my computer's hard drive because my computer simply won't be able to store all of it, but also just in case it crashes or dies or something. (Wow long sentence). Anyway, I'm curious as to how people do this? Should I simply get a big external hard drive and store everything on there, or is there another method people use?

Any suggestions/ideas would be very much appreciated. Thank you!

 

[TimOBrien]

Yup, you just need more than the boot drive so everything will stream smoothly.

The goal is smooth uninterrupted data flow.

Best setup for any daw:

OS, apps and plugins on boot drive.
Sample libraries on a second independent drive
Audio projects, tracks and misc data on a third independent drive

And then you want an external drive for backups you can lock somewhere safe
(I keep mine in a waterproof fireproof safe but then I live in a hurricane zone. A bank safety deposit box OFF SITE isn't paranoid...)

 

[witzendoz]

I have in the studio:

The main computer has a software drive and a project drive, all recordings are on the project drive. Side note, the software drive has been cloned to another drive so that if the computer main drive goes down I can swap drives and be running again in 10 mins.

Connected to the computer via ethernet is a NAS box that has 4 drives in it, it is set up so that all the information stored in the NAS box is on 2 of the drives. All project files are backed up to the NAS box.

I also have a USB drive that I plug in at the end of each day and back up all the days work, this drive travels with me away from the studio, off site backup.

Therefore all recoding projects are backed up on 4 drives.

Maybe a bit extreme but safe.

Alan.