With all these deals & freebies, especially sample packs - Where do you store them?

[aidan o driscoll]

The amount of space taken up by sample packs on my system harddrives is immense.

Larry and others keep adding more and more such things that are just very hard to ignore, especially if free

So where do you guys store your samples and sample packs at this stage? On your system drive, a second sample only drive in a system OR on a USB Drive?

 

[Larry Shelby]

10 minutes ago, aidan o driscoll said:

The amount of space taken up by sample packs on my system harddrives is immense.

Larry and others keep adding more and more such things that are just very hard to ignore, especially if free

So where do you guys store your samples and sample packs at this stage? On your system drive, a second sample only drive in a system OR on a USB Drive?

 

I have a 5 TB "Storage" drive that holds all my backups of installers, samples, etc...
got it for $89 at Costco...and I have other drives all over the place...LOL

A lot of this is unnecessary, except for IK sounds, which expire, so it's best
to have those archived, unless you don't mind the $9.95 re-activation fee.

[Lizzie Foster]

I have about 3 external HDD's that I keep various libraries on.  All are 7200 RPM in USB3 enclosures.  My Kontakt drive is all nicely organized and is mostly non-player libraries.  And now I have 4 1TB drives that usually have my bigger orchestral libraries on them (library tab libraries so I don't have to worry about looking for them) - things that bog down on a spinning drive.  I have a lot of libraries.  Also, you can pretty much fill library drives.  Since you normally only write a library once and then just read, you don't need the extra space usually required for a drive to function. 

The "back-up" drives you buy at places like Costco are great for storing stuff you aren't using and back-up.  But I wouldn't try to use them for any actual streaming applications.  They would work for loops where you pull them into your project folder to actually play. 

[ZincT]

For sample drives I use M.2 NVME drives to reduce the load times of Kontakt, Sampletank and other such instruments. I also use a SATA SSD for the system drive and have an old one which also gets used for data. For backup I have NAS drives and quite a few USB external drives.   

[aidan o driscoll]

Thanks guys,

What i am talking about is sample packs like from loopmasters and all that .. So 1000's of sample files that you might occasionally use only. Dumping those to an external USB Drive would be fine? and then just drag across the samples you want for a project rather than opening from within CW live? 

[Matthew Sorrels]

As of this week I now have about 95TB of disc space.  Half of it backs up the first half though.  I rarely keep libraries and loops on SSDs (I only have about 10TB of SSD space) the rest on normal drives.  My new drive of choice is the Seagate 16TB HDD Exos.  I have three of them now.  Some of the drives are in a older 4 bay QNAP nas.  The rest either in the workstation or in a new 5-bay Sabrent USB 3.2 drive enclosure.  This week I retired three smaller older drives (replaced with 2 Exos drives) and a crappy Mediasonic ProBox I had been using for many years.  I replace and upgrade hard drives and drive enclosures/bays often, I've tried just about everything at least once.  Though it did take three days to copy all the data from the ProBox to the new Sabrent -- I might want to start slowing down upgrading and replacing a bit.

I always try and expand my drive space so that every new drive has a backup drive, I don't use SSDs for backups.  The 16TB Exos will deliver about 200MB/sec even over a USB 3.1gen2 connection.  It's not as fast as my M2 main drive (3000MB/sec) but it's still not crazy slow either.  4TB SSD drives are getting cheaper, it's what I'd recommend for anyone that wants faster bulk storage.  Then use spinning drives for backups and things you don't need to be fast (ACID loop libraries, Foley sound effect libraries, etc)

I also offload things that I don't want to lose but don't need to be active to BD-R Blu-ray discs., 25gigs each, buy them in bulk spindles.  I mostly offload purchases to them (companies can and will go out of business, so if you buy something you need to keep it yourself if you can).  Retrieval can be sort of hit or miss though so it's not something I count on very much.

I use Macrium Reflect to backup the system and work drives.  I use a bunch of Robocopy scripts to backup libraries/audio files/video footage/etc.  If it doesn't compress I just back it up with Robocopy as files.  If it does compress or is a "system" I use the drive images.

ACID Loops and samples load just fine off a 200MB/sec Exos drive.  And so do just about any video games and even most Kontakt instruments.  The slow down is minor.  Assuming you have the right interface and can get the full speed out of the drive.

[Lizzie Foster]

21 minutes ago, aidan o driscoll said:

Thanks guys,

What i am talking about is sample packs like from loopmasters and all that .. So 1000's of sample files that you might occasionally use only. Dumping those to an external USB Drive would be fine? and then just drag across the samples you want for a project rather than opening from within CW live? 

Yes,  And you don't need a fancy drive for this because you shouldn't be streaming these, unlike say a Kontakt library.  

[aidan o driscoll]

However this is what I am finding great about LOOPCLOUD. 

All my purchased sample packs and one shots from Loopcloud and Loopmasters are in my account and displayed in my Library inside Loopcloud app. Loopcloud app comes with a sort of 8 track DAW functionality where you drag one shot loops / samples too listen too or even compile a loop based track in the 8 tracks, slice and dice etc. Everything up to now is in the cloud, not cluttering your harddrive. So next you drag/drop each of the 8 tracks into CAKEWALK, Now they are on your drive in CW Audio folder when you save.

You can also add samples and one shots to those loopcloud 8 tracks and audition them as part of your track in CW before committing them to CW .. playing from the cloud through the loopcloud plugin inside CW.

This is the way forward me thinks .. 

Edited September 3, 2020 by aidan o driscoll

[aidan o driscoll]

9 minutes ago, Dzilizzi said:

Yes,  And you don't need a fancy drive for this because you shouldn't be streaming these, unlike say a Kontakt library.  

Ok .. but you could audition from the USB drive via CW MEDIA over the right ???

Once auditioned from the USB drive in MEDIA, what does the action of dragging the sample from there to a track do then? Say in a new project? Is it in memory or temp folder somewhere until you save the project?

 

Edited September 3, 2020 by aidan o driscoll

[Lizzie Foster]

If you drag it into your project, it usually gets copied into your project folder, which should be on a fast drive, whether 7200 RPM or SSD.  If it doesn't copy, you could be in trouble later if the drive isn't available.  Believe me, you want it all together.  I've opened old projects and found audio is gone because I didn't save them correctly.  Trying to recreate them can be impossible. 

[Magic Russ]

For me, the problem is not so much space as much as it is organization.   Trying to find the best loops and one shots can be a challenge.   I really should check out some of the sample grouping tools.

 

Then when it comes to instrument libraries there are too many cases where I am not sure if something is worth saving. 

[kitekrazy1]

1 hour ago, aidan o driscoll said:

The amount of space taken up by sample packs on my system harddrives is immense.

Larry and others keep adding more and more such things that are just very hard to ignore, especially if free

So where do you guys store your samples and sample packs at this stage? On your system drive, a second sample only drive in a system OR on a USB Drive?

 

 Could you be more specific? Free ones usually get deleted after auditioning, Some have a lot of bloat to them and confuse loops with stems.  I don't buy them unless there are midi files.   I usually delete the wavs, keep the midi.  This is after they've been archived on a storage drive.

[aidan o driscoll]

1 minute ago, Magic Russ said:

For me, the problem is not so much space as much as it is organization.   Trying to find the best loops and one shots can be a challenge.   I really should check out some of the sample grouping tools.

 

Then when it comes to instrument libraries there are too many cases where I am not sure if something is worth saving. 

Then without fail @Magic Russ I highly recommend you give LOOPCLOUD a go. You get 30 days free and then if you continue its about a tenner a month or less. Even if you dont sub after the month you get to keep and can use all the welcome sample packs, GBs of, in your loopcloud account. You can also set the loopcloud app to "document"/ Index all your sample folders on your local harddrive.  Then you use the loopcloud app to find samples of a particular kind, filtering by KEY, Tempo, type etc. Its brilliant. Seemlessly ties together your cloud and local samples all accessible then via loopcloud plugin inside CW. AND you can audition samples without commiting, trying them live with your CW track and at the correct tempo/pitched until you find the right one.

[aidan o driscoll]

3 minutes ago, Paul Young said:

 Could you be more specific? Free ones usually get deleted after auditioning, Some have a lot of bloat to them and confuse loops with stems.  I don't buy them unless there are midi files.   I usually delete the wavs, keep the midi.  This is after they've been archived on a storage drive.

Over the years I have simply amassed 1000s of samples in sample packs, bought them, kept free ones I liked and all that. Up to now I have kept them all on my harddrives in System but now I am going to move them all to ext USB Drive because I will not be using all of them all of the time. I would like to audition them from the USB drive and only use the ones I want to rather than cluttering my HD with GBs of stuff not used regularly.

Of course I AM NOT talking of Kontakt and the like here, its literally just the sample packs with loops and one shots and the like

[kitekrazy1]

Some developers really bloat theirs.  One of them I had over 90gb.

[aidan o driscoll]

Of course .. another possible way of doing this is instead of using ext usb drives to store the sample packs etc one could put them all on an older unused PC and centraly store there .. accessing over a peer to peer network? Would that be quick enough vs USB Drive?

 

[Larry Shelby]

One thing that I do to save some space is to remove "Mac_Ox" directories from 
my downloads, as that I only use Windows and have no need for the "mac" side.
This helps to reduce the size of the Zip/Rar file

[LAGinz]

Anyone have any thoughts on what per cent of an M2  NVME drive (used as a sample drive) you need to keep open in order to avoid performance drop-offs ?

[ZincT]

2 hours ago, aidan o driscoll said:

However this is what I am finding great about LOOPCLOUD. 

All my purchased sample packs and one shots from Loopcloud and Loopmasters are in my account and displayed in my Library inside Loopcloud app. Loopcloud app comes with a sort of 8 track DAW functionality where you drag one shot loops / samples too listen too or even compile a loop based track in the 8 tracks, slice and dice etc. Everything up to now is in the cloud, not cluttering your harddrive. So next you drag/drop each of the 8 tracks into CAKEWALK, Now they are on your drive in CW Audio folder when you save.

You can also add samples and one shots to those loopcloud 8 tracks and audition them as part of your track in CW before committing them to CW .. playing from the cloud through the loopcloud plugin inside CW.

This is the way forward me thinks .. 

That's interesting Aidan as I have (at last!) been trying out Loopcloud based on your recommendation. I was expecting something like ADSR Sample Manager which I have been using up until now but Loopcloud comes with other plugins for DAW integration which look interesting. I still need to use it more to see whether it's going to replace ADSR SM but so far so good. I'm also tempted by one of their subs.

Regarding storage I am also still in the process of migrating to my new PC and that one has an M.2 NVME boot drive. On my old PC the Cakewalk projects are stored on the other data SATA SSD. Regarding the other M.2 NVME I have been using it for storage of samples, not just for instrument samples but also general the sample content. I am finding it a pain to manage that content though to ensure that any which doesn't get used is always the first to be offloaded (or deleted). I also find so many sample libraries come with filler that I won't use (e.g. stems) so they have to be vetted and slimmed down before they get onto my drives! I am also still deciding which drives to move to the new PC. Ideally I would like to have very few mechanical drives inside it.

1 hour ago, LAGinz said:

Anyone have any thoughts on what per cent of an M2  NVME drive (used as a sample drive) you need to keep open in order to avoid performance drop-offs ?

I think it's best to keep somewhere around 25% free, at least that what I try to do.

Edited September 3, 2020 by ZincT
typo

[Reid Rosefelt]

I find that a lot of instruments I own, load reasonably well off of a regular 7200 drive.  A SSD is a little faster, but it's not a problem.  Big regular drives are  relatively cheap.   My stuff is regular drive, SSDs, and then the the little chewing gum-sized M.2  NVme drives for the stuff that loads really slowly. 

On my SSDs, there's tons of stuff I own but just don't install, like a lot of the Komplete instruments, particularly if they are big.   If I'm not using something enough, it goes off my drives and into my backup drives.  Every now and then I make a backup of the backup drives. 

Also, I use cloud backup for my project files.  If I write music I want a backup that night.  But I don't use cloud backup for things like sample libraries because it slows everything down for me. 

I will be looking for a deal for another SSD during Black Friday.