File Management for Music Production (with External Hard Drives)

[@victormendoza8809]

I've been trying to organize many years of work (charts/audio/business, etc) and you're a TECHNO-BLESSING! Thank you!

[@CradleCat]

Thanks for commenting! Glad to hear it helped you out 🙌

[@zacharymenard2073]

Such great info, getting a new Mac and finally getting my organization in place, very quick and easy answers to age old questions, keep it up!!!

[@CradleCat]

Oooh which Mac did you get? I’ve been hearing more and more good things about the new models. And thank you! A lot of research and trial and error went into finding this setup 🙌

[@GeraldLawMusic]

Very helpful. I'll be organizing my files this weekend. Thank you!

[@CradleCat]

Glad you found it helpful! Let us know how it works for you and what cloud backup you end up using! 👍

[@hmcvm]

This is amazingly helpful - thanks so much for sharing!

[@CradleCat]

Hey glad you found it helpful! Thanks for watching 🙌

[@andrewlittlewood4850]

Going to do this now following your video!

[@CradleCat]

Thanks for checking out the video! Hope it helps your setup! 🙌

[@TheAllang123]

Excellent logic to maximize bandwidth and safety

[@CradleCat]

thank you! I have a background as a software consultant 🤓 funny how it actually translates to music a decent amount

[@marcell7406]

backblaze for project file is goated btw

[@CradleCat]

Thanks for the tip! I haven't checked that one out - what's makes it so good?

[@KyleValet]

Thank YOu...really well explained!!

[@CradleCat]

glad you found it helpful! Thanks for checking out my channel and hope it helped your setup!

[@ozzgold8]

This helps a lot! Thank you!

[@CradleCat]

Hey thanks for letting me know! Did you end up using the same setup?

[@richyrich9761]

I appreciate the info and have already followed this methodology. I too am a Mac user, but with Ableton Live 11. I avoid VST's but am looking to purchase SD3 which is quite large. How do I best separate out the the library portion of the program to my external SSD? Can it be done during install or post install? Thanks for any advice

[@CradleCat]

It depends on the library system, but a lot will ask you during the install process, or have a "relocate" option. Pretty sure Native Access (Native Instruments) and other have something like this.

[@EBCArts]

Hey man this is an amazingly helpful video. Thank you so much! One question - say you are producing music on a MacBook Pro, and you’re starting a new song. Would you plug in the SSD for sample/content libraries, make the song, and then switch to the other SSD to save the file? Or do you have both SSDs plugged in at the same time with a docking station (I heard you mention that in the video). I guess my main question is how to avoid the DAW saying something like “media files are missing” when I open a project because the samples are on another drive. So I’m wondering how you avoid that. Hopefully the question makes some bit of sense… let me know if I can clarify. Thank you very much for the valuable content!!

[@CradleCat]

Hey good question! Yes you'll want to have both SSDs plugged in at the same time. I use a docking station. In addition to just storage space (and the backup strategy i mentioned in the video), there's SUPPOSEDLY a slight performance benefit to do this, as you're splitting the data flow between 2 cables/drives (since each cable has a max bandwidth of how much data it can transfer in a second) instead of trying to read/write it all to one drive/cable. Hope that helps!

[@far03005]

Great vid, thanks! Can you recommend a high quality docking station that will allow me to connect multiple external hds through? You mentioned those, generally, in your vid. So far I’ve had to connect any external hds directly to computer as any usb splitters or multi port docs I’ve tried don’t seem to recognize external sds. Point me in the right direction if you can. Thanks!

[@JonPattersonMusic]

Great I just bought a M2 Studio with the base storage. Was trying to figure out what the best way to configure Cubase and SD3 as the libraries are quite large

[@CradleCat]

Oh nice, let us know what you think of the Studio! I've heard great things - I'm curious how quiet the fans are. My M1 Max Macbook Pro is virtually silent, and the fans almost never turn on. Hope this video helped with your Cubase / SD3 setup! Thanks for checking out the channel

[@vidark.6301]

Oh one more thing - could you do a video on organising samples and vst's as well? Like I think it's not really necessary with anything else than vst3's but i still have three folders of vst's many with the same plugins. Also not sure what I like best when it comes to naming/folders. WOuld like to hear your thoughts!

[@CradleCat]

Good idea! What do you mean for the VST organization though?

[@vidark.6301]

@@CradleCat I mean in ableton, and probably in Logic too, there are separate folders for VST, VST3, audiounits etc. Some plugins don't have all options, but many of us install them all out of habit - maybe even RXX or whatever extra can be installed. We basically only need VST3 - also for mac VST usually works better than audio units is what I've heard. This is one part of the equation (so to get less options to choose from when picking VST's). The other is whether to put VST's in folders for for instance BASS, Synth, or EFX, or SoundToys, Eventide, Fabfilter, Arturia etc. Just some thoughts on naming of folders etc to keep organised, would be nice :) thanks!

[@VEXUS920]

Great video! I would not recommend Google Drive for this process, however. Google Drive only saves backups as "Computers". So if you change computers or upgrade or switch operating systems you have to kinda start over with backing up. These files are not deleted but they are only related to the computer they originated from not the drives in which they are housed. When you start re-inserting this drive on a new computer it starts everything over and there is no way to combine the files. The way around this is to be very selective with your choices in backing up, but if you're backing up a whole drive you'll spend hours or more just re-backing up your previous sessions and loops. It becomes a bit of a mess. I would recommend Backblaze it also has unlimited storage.

[@CradleCat]

Thanks! I’ll have to check it out 👍 however just to clarify the purpose here for anyone watching or reading: There are definitely multiple solutions for the cloud storage option, but even less optimized ones are fine with me because the main goal of the suggested setup is to cover this scenario: 1) Physical drive dies / lost stolen 2) I buy a new drive 3 I download everything from the cloud backup and put it on the new hard drive Quickly switching the backup logistics when I buy a new computer isn’t the highest priority for me. I have done it once already with Google Drive, and I just leave it on to do it's thing as it takes its time to re-back up the drive in Google Drive > Computers (and yes it did back it up to a new instance of the drive since it was a connected to a new computer). However, that’s fine with me as it was a one time ordeal, and my main priority is avoiding catastrophic loss of data (client work, my own projects, etc). tldr; just make sure you're backing your stuff up to the cloud somewhere somehow, because you might eventually have a super sad day if you don't 😂

[@VEXUS920]

I agree overall! @@CradleCat

[@Sxndshrxw]

Amazing vid thanks man

[@CradleCat]

Thanks for watching! Glad you found it helpful 🙌 What kind of music are you making?

[@NATmusic27]

Ok but didn't you have any problems setting up an external ssd with you projects in it for cloud backup? I tried using google drive and it made couple of files in the projects corrupetd

[@CradleCat]

Great question - I will do some more testing on this and confirm!

[@ryanlesser]

I could be wrong, but I think that you cannot sync multiple drives to Google Drive. I am having the issue currently where my internal MacBook pro drive is full and I would like to keep artwork on my internal drive and music production on and external SSD... but have all of it syncing with Google Drive (which is similar to the diagram at the end of your video). According to my research, this is not possible. If you know of a way to do this, please let me know. Thanks.

[@CradleCat]

Hey! That should be possible (at least it is for me!) On your Macbook, go to Google Drive (app) > Preferences > Add Folder. Then just add whichever folders/drives you want to sync. Hope that helps!! 🙌 And thanks for checking out the channel!

[@vidark.6301]

I have a 2tb macbook pro 2019 with a lot of trouble. Will start using your system soon - but I wonder; since 2tb harddrive is excessive for your system - would partitioning this drive and use it for lets say works in progress, and some favorite samples, do me any good? Also. - did you have a recommendation for a dock..?

[@CradleCat]

Hey thank for checking out the video! Hmm, that question is maybe a bit too technical for me to know the right answer. However, I'd personally not partition and instead use external drives, because 1) it makes it easier to upgrade laptops/computers in the future, and 2) you *might* have a slightly lower performance since more data is going in/out of the same physical disk instead of splitting it up across multiple drives. Again, maybe there's another hardware expert that can help on that question?

[@vidark.6301]

@@CradleCat That makes sense! Thanks for answering..!

[@cedricledore8806]

So which usb dock do you have ? Which trademarks are the quality ones ?

[@CradleCat]

I need to make a video on that too. Right now I'd recommend the high end CalDigit ones. I've also recently seen a few other brands but haven't tested yet. Would be good to compare them at some point

[@Outlabyrinth]

Super Nice Could you do the same with VST ? Installed on external drive ?

[@CradleCat]

I wouldn't recommend it. From what I understand, the VST themselves will perform best when installed directly on your computer/laptop. However, the sound libraries for those VSTs can be installed on external drives (that's what I do). Hope that helps and thanks for watching!

[@Outlabyrinth]

@@CradleCat thx for the answer ;)

[@piaknr5415]

@@CradleCatcan you show us how to install the libraries to an external ssd?

[@piaknr5415]

@@CradleCatcan you show us how to install the libraries to an external ssd?

[@zakaroonetwork777]

Please, What App are you using to Illustrate this presentation? Thank you.

[@CradleCat]

I'm using draw.io in this video! 🙌 Thanks for watching!