Hello

I am having a sort out of all the files on my external SSD's. These consist of Logic Projects, samples and installation files downloaded from the sister site.

Now, my dilemma is this...I have so many files, and three external SSD's

My main one, has Kontakt libraries on it, along with presets from Arturia, Logic Pro sessions and samples.
The 2nd SSD has all those one it, as well as all my photos, videos, music and installation files.

The third SSD will literally just be a backup, of the backup.

Having just bought a new SSD which is now the main SSD, things are now starting to get confusing. Not knowing what I have where etc.

My question is this, do you reckon, I should keep the installation files for stuff such as plugins, native instruments, Arturia, adobe, etc...or seeing as we have the sister sister and other sites, just delete them. I have a Time Machine backup of my Mac with everything installed that I use anyway.

But I am asking this in case I have to do a complete install of everything from scratch for some reason or another. But with files flying around left right and centre, I don't know whats on what. I've already managed to forget copying some superior drummer 3 libraries onto the new SSD and then gone and wiped the old SSD thinking I had everything.

What do you think?

Thanks

 

The fact is most people hoard shit purely for the sake of hoarding shit (me included). I tend to favour one decent sized external SSD for ALL the stuff I need to access regularly (like Kontakt libs, Sample CDs etc) - currently a 2TB. Mine's attached via a hub which my Mac Mini sits on top of but whatever works.

Anything for longer-term storage does not need to be on a SSD it can be on a nice cheap NAS with bog standard HDDs with RAID/mirroring for resilience (which is the important part). Leaving ANYTHING on a single drive be that HDD or SDD at some point will royally bite you on the ass with data loss - may not be for months or years but you can bet your ass it'll happen eventually. This is especially important for stuff you never want to lose like your projects and photos which hopefully are in that Time Machine backup (although didn't sound it from your post but maybe I misunderstood)

With the cheapness of cloud storage you could of course rather than cough up for a NAS use cloud storage for your longer-term storage I dont think any cloud provider is gonna start trawling through your shit looking for warez. I still back up my system drive which has all my projects on to cloud storage.

 

I keep my OS and apps/plugins on one drive (NVMe SSD), the reasoning is simple, the OS files and various stuff that it uses (log files, temp files, that kind of stuff) is used most often, most frequently, and it's generally a shitton of small files. SSDs are the best for quick file accesses so that's the ticket here.

Then the sample libraries and such are on a separate SATA SSD, since they are not as often accessed but still benefit from fast transfer speeds.

Project files are on an another SSD and I consolidate my projects always so they're all self-contained. The thing here is that they're easily backed up from there, and kept separate from other backups.

Then there's a bunch of external HDDs for backups, aux data like installers, my music libraries, films, whatnot.

Easy enough to set up and maintain for day to day usage.

Then various cloud backups for personal files, project files, work shit, in varying security levels (from "ultraparanoid" to "whatever's freely provided").

I run other systems as well, but that's a entirely separate concern here.

Your idea is worth pursuing for sure, just keep everything as compartmentalized as possible so it's easy to backup, restore, and in general just handle.

 

i have one ssd labeled the cloud. this host everything and is essentially my back up.

my other ssds are seprated by file type. and my kontakt stuff is spread into sub catgories across all ssds to avoid bottleknecking. it has taking me about 12 years to manage a system that works for not only my computers workload and the drives capabilities but also how my brain is wired lol

 

I keep most of the installers, and sometimes delete older ones,
don't take sister site or any filehost site for granted,
depending on which plugins, libraries and softwares you use most, those would be the ones to backup installers

 

Because there is no reason to pay SSD prices for high capacity backups, instead of HDD. Something like 2-4 times more, depending on what drives you actually buy. Data recovery of a failed backup will be a lot easier with HDD if ever necessary. There are better options for commercial use. But with SSD for home storage, you are paying more for a drive that you never hope to use.

 

Well, this exactly.

There's simply no need for the performance that faster drives offer if the storage is going to be idle for a long period of time. RAID only comes into play if your data can't be out of play for X minutes/hours/days. And RAID or not, HDD or SSD, all of this is immaterial if a needed piece of data is only one one place, don't do that.

And... HDD is still the best way for a lot of storage, big storage arrays are without fail racks off disk trays and for performance it's tiered storage, specialized storage layouts and cache hierarchies, but now we've moved onto big-bucks specialist domain.