Hey everyone,

I’m curious how you all handle your storage when it comes to big sample libraries. Right now, I’m working off a 4TB external SSD drive and I still have about 1.4TB free, but with all the Kontakt libraries out there, it feels like I’m constantly being pushed toward buying bigger drives.

Some of these libraries are 40–50GB each, and once you start collecting a handful, even 4TB fills up surprisingly fast. It’s starting to feel like a never-ending cycle of needing more space, especially since I like having my libraries available without constantly uninstalling/reinstalling.

So my question is: how do you manage your storage? Do you just keep adding bigger drives as you go, do you offload older libraries onto backup drives, or do you have some system for curating what’s installed vs. archived?

Would love to hear how you all balance drive size, organization, and practicality when it comes to Kontakt and other heavy sample libraries.

Thanks!

 

good question.. this is a big issue. in the last 5 years kontakt libraries get bigger and bigger.. games get bigger too. some are around 100 gigabytes now as standard.. that is fine but its alot of space

1. i organize all libraries in production titles
2. i test the libraries and if they are good i keep them... i have kept some for years... but some are not worth it so dont like remove them off better..
3. unfortunately i think the best is investing into a big ssd drive.. i dont do online backup
4. i have burned all my libraries onto blue ray discs that i keep in my house
5.. as i said keep only the best of the best libraries..
6. drives can crash after some time be sure to copy your material onto blue ray discs or backup from one drive to other

 

Simple enough, Kontakt libraries are my biggest space hog in my music production SSD, so I only allow myself to have some overlap between them. What that means is, I might allow myself to have Strezov's Afflatus Strings and Spitfire Chamber Strings, but I will not allow myself to add Performance Samples Pacific Strings on top of those two. If I want to have something, something else has to go. Right now I'm breaking that rule by having a ton of texture libraries, more than I could ever use, but that only as a trial basis. Soon enough, I'll just clean up over half of them.

I also have TreeSize installed to keep track not only of that SSD, but of all the storage in my PC. It's a very useful program to remind yourself of how much space some things take, and it also helps you find quite heavy stuff that you don't even remember being there.

 

Yeah, the libraries I add now really have to be very good. Either top-tier in quality or offering something unique that adds real value to my existing collection.

Otherwise, I just can’t justify the space anymore. With drives filling up so quickly, every new library has to earn its spot and bring something I don’t already have covered.

 

...that. of course. what else.

i use vintage computers, vintage software and a lot of custom software, including "big data" systems similar to what they nowadays call "AI".

most of that is part of an audio and graphics envoriment featuring 3-4 different computer with different OS.

so i have close to 50 TB - but spread across 30 disks. mostly because my main operating system has a 2TB disk limit anyway, but also because multiple smaller disks force you to organize things.

there is the "installs", subsets of those installs for certain task, and sometimes i also keep all the installers for such an "install" in one place in order to refresh things when required.

then there is "the collection", like most of your also have. , one disk for programming, another for audio files, and a whole group of disks which is dedicated to a 1-million-images art project.

the "big data" nonsense is currently outsourced on a rackserver, the holy "downloads" finds their way to the macs via a windows pc.

of course everyting exists twice, i regulary run manually controlled backups. important things are going onto BD-XL which are stored in a different place.

sample libraries? hardly used here, but the above ideas would apply to them, too. one disk with legit and one with non-legit, a backup of the whole disk and eventually a custom method to access and preview things.

i always have at least 1 enclosures, 2 HDs and 1 SSD in reserve.

inside the disks there are mostly like 2-8 subfolders in the root.

if you do not sort, you can not backup, and if you do not backup, you will lose things.

 

Last edited: Sep 10, 2025 at 2:12 PM

If something goes unused for a year or two, I'll delete it. (Or offload to a cheaper/older storage medium, then delete after another year.)

If something is trivially reproducible ("37 GB of tambourine.. but drowned in reverse reverb"), I won't bother.

I only keep the 1-2 libraries that I like best in any one category.

When I install a new library, I try to revisit unfinished projects, to see if the new library can replace older libraries.

I have my library folders on my drive named like so:

Category - Instrument - Product name - Company name

Brass - Trombone - The Funky One - SampleSounds
Brass - Trombone - Emotional - BrapBrapSpeedStripes

That way I can quickly see dupes.

 

You're a typical NI Kontakt victim! You shouldn't buy more than you can eat. On the other hand, you should only download what you would buy. I would delete what you rarely or never play, or buy an external SSD/HDD just for Kontakt. You can also burn and store software if you can't bear to part with it.

 

That's the neat part. I don't! I just buy more hard drives, for now.

When the amount of hard drives becomes unreasonable, it will take a while to sort it all out, but it sure beats spending time every day fiddling around with your files, when all I want is to make more music.

 

I have enough software, sounds, software, movies, and presets, so I've imposed a complete download ban on myself.
I only install updates. I have double-backed up all my data.

 

I'm just hoping that any day now we'll get affordable, small, super dynamic crystal storage like sci-fi promised us - a little 1cm crystal portable fast "drive" that will store 100TB of data (essentially, everything I have to date and are likely to need in the future) and cost under $100, so you can afford to have a few of them all synced, and carry all your data around with you.

Aaaany day now...

 

Best storage solution imho are RAID5 systems...

 

is that maximum one should use ?

 

all on bluray ? what did it cost ?

 

https://audiosex.pro/threads/lite-c...-bits-conversion-for-kontakt-libraries.75538/
Shrink those big Kontakt libraries without having to delete them, it’s a great option even for the libraries you keep, but the process will take time

 

I delete things I don't use/open even once in 12 months, saves a lot of space

 

I back my Kontakt libraries up to floppy disks.

 

tzzsmk

please could you explain a bit ?

 

I saved ~150Gb by converting sample packs from .WAV to FLAC.

 

I keep my Kontakt use to a bare minimum. There are not that many I really use anyway, because I am usually not shooting for realistic instruments. If I see a Kontakt library and consider downloading it, I just ask myself when am I ever going to use a tuba library? So it sort of takes care of itself. I keep the other virtual synths which have large content libraries down to a minimum also. I take sample packs apart and remove all the spam in them, and delete everything but wav format.

I use the Mac program Find Any File on my external drives, because I have saved search strings to find all of the junk included with sample packs. Strings like: Demo, artwork, info, readme, instructions, user, Constuction, catalog, full mix, stems, mastered, unmastered, *.mp3, *.pdf, *.doc, kong, nnxt, battery, astra, beatmaker, sampler instruments, *.rex, *.rx2, *.aiff, and many others.

So i run that search periodically, and then delete everything it finds. The amount of spam, junk and extra formats that gets put into sample packs is ridiculous. I'm sure there are various Windows equivalent programs.