Archiving Question

[buzzripper]

I was trying to decide how to organize the sound folders/files on my sounds hard drive the other day, when it dawned on me that whatever I decide now I'm going to have to stick with - forever. Otherwise, when I pull up a sequence that has a bunch of VSTi's that all go out and look for their presets and sounds at a particular path, if that path isn't there I'm outta luck.

Is this true? What do you do to ensure that the libs are located where your plugin can find them when you pull up that project from a year or two ago? Do you have to just keep everything eactly where it is on the same drive letter and path? How else will the sequencer/plugin find the right preset/lib file? I use Cubase. Seems like archiving might be problematic when you're talking about these mega-gig sized libraries. Or am I missing something?


Thanks...


Andy

[Will Roget]

If you end up moving all your stuff (formatting, copying to another computer, reorganizing, etc.), Kontakt has a convenient way of searching for it. Basically you have three options - 1) let Kontakt search around one folder up from where it's searching now (usually finds it if it's in a logical place), 2) let Kontakt search the whole friggen drive for it (not a good idea unless you're totally lost), and 3) find the folder yourself. Kontakt-2 lets you click checkboxes for what kinds of searches you wanna perform, in order.

Virtual instruments, however, tend to stuff all their sample data into one or two really big files. It'd be worth it to test out how each of your VIs respond to a move, since some don't even bother to ask for a search and just stop working entirely; you'd need to reinstall. Kompakt-based VIs shouldn't have this problem though, you'd just use the aforementioned Kontakt search methods.

[Will Roget]

By the way, forgot to mention - in kontakt/kompakt instruments, you'll wanna SAVE the file after you've done a search for the samples. That way you don't have to search for them again every single time you load the patch.

[Tom Crowning]

[...]
Seems like archiving might be problematic when you're talking about these mega-gig sized libraries. Or am I missing something?

I use a quite simple solution for this problem (PC based, I don't know Macs):
everything is on a dedicated disc or partion of a disk, so it can
easily be replaced be a bigger sized disk if necessary.

- all programs are on drive c:
- all my composed music is on drive m: (like music)
- all my samples/libraries are on drive s: (like soundbase)

The folder structure on each disk will stay the same all the time, I've made
(or let made by a script) a document with this structure just in case
I'd forget something.
This way making a backup is easy, too, because I only have to backup
the c: and m:, the huge s: drive could be rebuild from my original CDs/DVDs
without problem.

Tom

[Bruce A. Richardson]

I agree with the separate drive methodologies. Keep only OS and programs on the boot drive--no data at all. Keep your project data on one or more separate drives. For samples, fill all remaining drive slots with drives, and distribute the samples out among the separate drives in an approximate balance of how much polyphony you are drawing. In other words, if you create any really piano-intensive work, pull pianos from a separate drive, and other instruments from other drives. You get better performance that way...with sampling, the drives are always going to be your polyphony bottleneck.

[TARI]

I agree as well.

C: System and a folder with my projects
D: Sample Libraries
E: More Sample Libraries and VST Instruments.

Every day before shutting down my PC I make a back up of the folder I have been working in, to a folder in drive E: