File Management-- moving en masse to a new drive or new computer

  • Thread starter Thread starter Obi-Wan zenabI
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Obi-Wan zenabI

Obi-Wan zenabI

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Time to record my band again!

I have a USB hard drive that I'd like to use for audio files instead of my laptop's drive. I've already dumped last winter's audiofiles into it. It's 250GB.

So if I open the files on that hard drive with cubase on another computer, or on this one after deleting the onboard copies, will cubase know where everything is? Or will I get a million of those "cannot find" messages?

I admit that I have just about zero understanding of how files are stored and how audio events and changes are stored.

Could I do this: Let's say I worked on one project at a time on the computer, then sent it to the Outboard HD once finished for the day, and then importing another project to work on it.
 
As long as you have all of the directories and the correct files to go with the projects, you probably won't run into too many problems moving them around like that. We moved some of our projects back and forth using a usb drive between a few different places for a few months and everything worked fine.

I do recommend from my experience that if you're trying to work on the project that you copy it to the computer you're working on first as opposed to accessing the project straight from the drive. It should run smoother that way.
 
Thanks Soldierone.

I'm just afraid that I'll open a project and it will be looking for everything in C:Audio/Projects/Fall2007/etc. when it's all now in in D;Audio/Projects/Fall2007/etc...

I'm sure I could play around with it and see what happens, but losing tracks and mixes I've done would obviously be disastrous.
 
Cubase puts the project file in the home project directory, and it doesn't use hardcoded paths anywhere. As long as you copy the main project directory with all the files and subdirectories together, you won't have any problems. I do this all the time, I track on a laptop, and move it all over to a desktop for mixing. Never any issues.

If you're nervous, just COPY (not move) one project and try it out. You won't hurt the original project by simply copying files,
 
I do recommend from my experience that if you're trying to work on the project that you copy it to the computer you're working on first as opposed to accessing the project straight from the drive. It should run smoother that way.[/QUOTE]

I'm also new to this so sorry if this is a stupid question, but won't copying it to you computer defeat the purpose of using a second drive? I thought the reason for using a second drive was so your main drive just has to run your OS and recording software and not be slowed down by the file itself.
 
My situation is that I have been using my only computer, a laptop, for all my computer needs and need to now change up how I'm doing it now that I've run out of room.

I want to have a outboard drive to store music on (I've already copied everything over to a drive that I made my band pay for). I'm just afraid to click delete on the exact same files in my computer....

I would have thought that moving the project in use over to the onboard drive would make the most sense, so I think I'll be doing that.

It's been almost two years, though, and most of the crap we recorded now sounds hopelessly loose and unsalvageable.
 
I organise my tracks into folders, and save everything relevant to that particular track in that folder. This means cubase is just looking for files in whatever folder you stick the .cpr file in. Keeps it all neat and means you can just throw it wherever and its safe.
 
Waffleness said:
I organise my tracks into folders, and save everything relevant to that particular track in that folder. This means cubase is just looking for files in whatever folder you stick the .cpr file in. Keeps it all neat and means you can just throw it wherever and its safe.
Click to expand...

Good call, your waffleness.

Yes, I'm trying to get in the habit of saner file storing-- it seems like Cubase is not set up well to store files for one project together automatically-- at least once you've recorded a bunch of songs, you've got a jumble of bits and pieces here and there. I never thought much about it, since cubase could find everything it needed.

Now that I want to separate the wheat from the chaff, get rid of bad takes and poorly performed tunes, I'm lost in the wilderness.

And what makes it more difficult is the fear that I'm going to irreprably screw up some file that I actually want to keep while moving things around.

As with everything else, I need to get out of my simple four track mode of thinking --- anything more complicated than digging through the shoebox for cassettes has me all twisted in knots. The audio engineering aspects of HR come more easily to me than the computer part of the equation.

I've also had trouble organizing and accessing various plugins-- there seem to be several folders that they've wound up in, and every time I go to download some more, I forget how I got the old ones to show in the pulldown menus.
 
Obi-Wan zenabI said:
Now that I want to separate the wheat from the chaff, get rid of bad takes and poorly performed tunes, I'm lost in the wilderness.
Click to expand...

With respect to audio in the project folder that isnt being actively used such as bad takes and old exports, simply get cubase to purge it all. There is an option (somewhere, not sure off the top of my head) that will effectively "purge all unused audio samples" from your project folder. Very useful for keeping HDD space free.


Obi-Wan zenabI said:
I've also had trouble organizing and accessing various plugins-- there seem to be several folders that they've wound up in, and every time I go to download some more, I forget how I got the old ones to show in the pulldown menus.
Click to expand...

Plugins are reasonably easy to keep track of. Simply create a shortcut to the cubase 'plugins' folder and stick the shortcut on your desktop. This means that everytime you get a plugin, download it to your desktop and drag and drop it into the shortcut. It ensures they all end up in the right place and you dont have to root around for them.

At least, thats what I do :)
 
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