VITAL ways to Keep Your Project Folders and Files Organized in REAPER

[@vividtreks]

Incredibly useful and straight to the point! Just what I didn't know I needed. Thanks a bunch.

[@theultimatemixdown]

Thank you! Glad it helped

[@ashleymoses9359]

I’ve ran out of disk space and I don’t wanna move my files because Ive experienced pathway destruction in the past and want to avoid that. What do you recommend doing? Should I just leave those files on C- Drive and add an external SSD and start saving there? Thanks

[@theultimatemixdown]

I know exactly what you mean and it's a huge pain in the butt to move things (especially plugin paths), but I would highly recommend a high capacity (1tb or higher) external USB or USB C drive to store project files and soundbanks/samples/libraries. Unless you have huge libraries full of samples, start with moving the project files since they should render fine from an external HD. If there are any completed projects, back them up and get them off of your primary disc. Even wip files should be on an external disc. You want your main computer's hard drive to have at least 25% capacity. And it helps to render project files from an external drive for efficiency. These are my recommendations and are some of the things that have worked well for me so far.

[@jimmythebold589]

@@theultimatemixdown yup. having a full hard drive is counter=productive. period.

[@DavidEsp1]

At 2:32, Re "Default render path", what is your rationale behind specifying a single default path for all projects, as opposed to just leaving it blank, so that (as the grey text explains) renders would appear in each project's own folder/directory? Or specifying a relative path e.g. to get them to appear in a renders sub-folder/directory of each project? Do you normally make use of that default render path, or is it just there as a "safety net"? Is there a pragmatic advantage in gathering all renders into one place?

[@theultimatemixdown]

Hi David, this is more of a personal preference. I used to keep them in their separate project folders but it's become second nature to simply go to my render folder to get the latest renders vs. navigating through each project's subfolder.

[@2mdcoe]

So you don’t record to your internal computer drive? Just external drives?

[@theultimatemixdown]

That's right. You don't have to do it this way, but it keeps me organized and helps a little with computer processing. I'll then back my projects up on another hard drive for redundancy

[@2mdcoe]

Thanks for this. I’m just starting out with recording and have looked at the different ways to set Reaper up but I think they are still kind of messy for me. I only have one external HDD right now but plan to get another Ssd soon to add. My desire is to not use the internal drive because I don’t want to load it up. Reaper can do two paths at once. Can you briefly tell me the best way to add the second external to do them at once to avoid the internal? Then maybe I can then send to a cloud source for the third final backup? Again, I like your way of doing it as I’d like a separate Project folder that’s easy to access with everything in it for that project. Looks much cleaner to me. My external is a 2TB LaCie HDD.

[@theultimatemixdown]

@@2mdcoe I would definitely recommend installing REAPER on your computer's drive for three reasons: 1. Certain plugins may be difficult to launch with a portable install of REAPER on an external drive 2. it will only take up MBs on your drive and not GBs like some other DAWs would and 3. It would most likely run faster directly on your computer's drive. If you are still looking to install the application on a separate drive, there are some resources out there that can help you with this - search for "Portable Install of REAPER on external drive". What I would do with two external drives - #1 has my REAPER projects and samples/virtual instrument soundbanks and #2 is a backup. If I had three drives - #1 has my REAPER projects, #2 has my samples/soundbanks, and #3 is a backup of both. Hopefully this helped and definitely let me know if you have any other questions!

[@jimmythebold589]

Hey, Kevin, do you still have my Reaper backups?? haha!!

[@theultimatemixdown]

Haha exactly