I just went through hell to install all of my plugins again after corrupted os, and I am afraid of running into that issue again, but thankfully uninstalr from reddit and Tron script helped me get everything in order and eliminating viruses and problems

I am strictly trying to download from audioz, but this took way too long to find everything. I am not sure what I am I willing to do, but I would like to mass install in a row of plugins through some kind of application. I am not sure if that even exists which is what I am asking.

Could I have cut down that time by using something?

 

the best thing to do is to image your machine after you have installed and tweaked everything, this way if you have any issues HD failure, corrupt OS or viruses you can bring the machine back in its entirety to the point that the image was taken. I keep 3 images at any one time and re-image it every couple of months or so. I also log every install or machine tweak in a txt file so I can see what each image has.

Obviously keep the image on an offline/external drive.

I use Acronis CyberProtect Home.

 

You're right!
I use Macrium Reflect.

 

Once you have installed everything as is, then make a ghost.
When you know what you need in your DAW that is essential, then you have a backup also when things would go wrong.

I personally think that Windows is getting more problems with DAW users.
When you have a good running DAW (and have the money for it) , then never connect it to the internet anymore (Windows)
When it's not broke, don't fix it.

Also do a Ghost on a Physical Drive, not SSD.
SSD lifespan is questionable.

Buy another PC for Internet use, and leave the DAW offline.

https://www.ubackup.com/windows-10/ghost-hard-drive-windows-10-1122.html

 

Last edited: Dec 16, 2023

This time, once you get everything back to the way you want/like it, use a disc imaging backup tool (like acronis, norton ghost, etc) and make a backup image of your entire system to an offline hard drive for safe keeping. Whenever your system changes warrant it (i.e. things are more than comfortably out of sync with your current backup), make another safety backup image... This way you will NEVER have to go thru hell again if something messes up.

Also a word to the wise (if it applies here), it cannot be stressed enough that active internet connections on media production machines (especially those running scene releases) is a flat no-no.

 

New SSD's should be better than cheap HDD's. You don't have any moving parts so there much less problems usually you're right though that SSD used to have only x amount of rewrites but that's not really a big issue anymore afaik. My western digital 5tb started to make clicking sound and it's like 3 years old maybe and only used as a desktop storage device so no traveling around or whatever is bad for physical hdd's. 10 years should be doable with a new SSD so it will usually outlife the most pc or notebook setups out there except maybe people who build their own pc's and update compoants

 

My "C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3\" is a symlink to a folder on my cloud drive. Portable installs also go to the cloud. Works for ~90% of plugins. I'm too lazy to maintain offline backups.

 

I have two 6 TB Seagate's that are redundant synced with the same backup information (backups for the backup) that I have been using for quite some time. However they are kept on a shelf in plastic anti-stat cases that never get moved other than to read or write to/from them. Also when making backups it's a good idea to use CRC checks to make certain your source material matches your archived material. This goes for ANY media you choose to place your backup to - SSD or HDD...

 

How much do you pay for a cloud space account with enough terrabytes these days? When I made the choice to backup locally the price for a big enough cloud space was already higher after like 10 months compared to the price of the external drive. How fast can you up and download from your cloudspace? I have a 1000mbits glass fibre connection but it rarely happens that an up or download is really faster than an usb 2.0 connection and I think that most people have at least one usb 3.0 bus nowdays.

 

My plugins are less than 5 GB. If I needed to sync a TB or more, I'd mount a NAS into my filesystem or use some fully automatic LAN/WAN syncing solution like Syncthing.