I have a new MacBook Pro with a 500GB HD and it's filling up fast with plugins, instruments, effects and other stuff. I bought a 500GB external HD to save my musical projects to, and I'm thinking of storing all that stuff there as well, so I can my Mac HD freed up for other, non-musical stuff (which takes up so much less space).
What do you all advise? I know that if everything but the DAW is on the external drive, then that means I have to carry it around everywhere I might want to use it. That's OK with me.
I use Garage Band, Studio One Producer and Logic Express.
Organizing all that stuff would be my next project. Does it make sense to organize by types, manufacturers, instruments, fx and so on? What schemes do you use?
I read the article on organizing samples, and I follow that scheme basically myself, but what about all the other stuff one needs to complete music projects?

I use the biggest available internal HD.

My curent MBP (a 2008 unibody 2.66ghz C2D ) has a 750gb, moved from my previous machine.
When that's full, I'll buy the then biggest HD, ( probably 1.5 or 2TB )

I only have libraries and current projects loaded. All older material is passed onto externals.
As far as backups go, I have several external HDs and numerous bare drives that slot into a USB caddy.

Many will tell you that you get better performance from an external FW HD, which may be true, but I edit high-def video ( ie broadcast standard ) from my internal drive and I have no problems whats so ever.
Consequently, a bit of audio is no problem.
( coming from an age where most computers could not do much, I am very efficient & rarely use more than 8 tracks of actual audio)

My only issue is I need a faster Mac because FCP-X is not "fluid" on such an old machine as mine......

I use a MBP with a 750GB 7200 drive in. Obviously, all applications, plugins etc are installed on this.

I have a minimal set of samples and libraries installed on this so I can play with stuff on the go. If I'm working on projects and want to continue working on them while I'm mobile, I'll consolidate a project with the necessary samples where possible, or take my drive if going to another studio etc.

My main sets of samples, sample libraries and plugin library content is on one of my FW drives. So for example, EXS and Kontakt libraries, Spectrasonics plugin library content and so forth all goes in here - it's just not practical to keep all this stuff on the internal drive for me.

I have a top level /Music/ folder, in there I have Samples, Mixes, Projects etc folders, and inside my Samples folder I have Library, PlugIn and Misc folders, for sample libraries, plugin sample content, and random stuff (like internet freebies and so on) respectively.

Pretty straightforward.

Plugins really can't be organised, as they come up in the default way OSX handles them (badly).

I also have other drives, working drives, other library and backup drives and so on for other stuff. And I have my drives catalogued, so I can search or check what's on them without having them with me, or connected, which is a big help. Particularly just after a drive failure so you can check what was on it you've just lost... !



Edited by desmond (28/04/12 11:46 AM)

Quote desmond:

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And I have my drives catalogued, so I can search or check what's on them without having them with me, or connected, which is a big help.

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can you tell me more about this.. How do you go about cataloging a drive? is there a utility in OSX, or a third party utility?

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www.Lozjackson.com

Quote Bossman:

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can you tell me more about this.. How do you go about cataloging a drive? is there a utility in OSX, or a third party utility?

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There's always been a variety of disk cataloging tools for all platforms, ranging from quick and dirty built-in stuff (eg. using the terminal to list the directory contents to a text file "ls -l > mycat.txt") up to fairly slick third-party applications.

I use a combination of methods.

Google around and see what works for you...