Moving projects to external storage

[Gary Shore]

Greetings to everyone over here and as always much thanks to everyone who's taken the time to school me in all the different aspects of things I've asked about from time to time....

Posting this because up till now I've just been using my C-drive folder for my projects but,since I've been fairly active ,I'm starting to see my overall  222GB SSD storage space impacted,given that I've moved into the world of installing plugins and looking into setting up  some different VSTi as well....

Just started investigating what's involved in successfully transferring a given project and,while browsing various related threads using search over here has helped me get an initial sense of things,this has been in the context of having to weed out a lot of other stuff related to my main area of focus,so I figured I'd simplify things by posting this vs.continuing to try to figure out which exact search term would get me to threads/posts which would be what I was looking for...

Having studied the "Audio file management" section of the Reference Guide(pg.1155),I'm now becoming aware of the factors involved re-cwp.,bundle files,audio data,etcetc...been checking this out w/the focus being on making sure that all the needed data to get the project up and running in the DAW is completely transferred from the C-drive locations (and then back? vs. Cakewalk being able to open a project from the external storage??)but TBCH would really appreciate being able to access either online info or threads here that would break everything down understandably so I'll know exactly what I'm doing and all the things I need to be aware of here....

Have been checking out some excellent online resources about the overall process but none are Cakewalk-specific re-questions I have like-

How does having third-party plug-ins/VSTi's involved in a given project along w/default Cakewalk ones affect things here?

How do I make sure Melodyne data used to set up specific tracks is part of the overall seamless transition process so that a project will open again intact in the DAW once it's been moved?

I'd greatly appreciate any info/tips/advice/suggestions/links as,while I'm still only using less than about 30% of my overall storage capacity,I'm anticipating this changing fairly soon,especially given the GB some of the VSTi's I'm planning to start using have,added to the large number of new projects I'm anticipating starting to work on in the DAW itself,so it would be great to  get a handle on all this stuff now...

Update Mon.AM-Since posting this thread on Fri.I've been describing the different subfolders within the Project Folder in some of the posts I've made over the weekend but realized I have a screenshot app installed so here's exactly what I've been referring to-

Edited August 30, 2021 by Gary Shore

[treesha]

8 hours ago, Gary Shore said:

I'll also have a complete copy of the Project file as a back-up in external storage,and repeating this process each time I finish work on the Project,i.e.deleting the previous copy in the external storage and replacing it w/a copy of the current version of the Project....

Hi Gary,

Just wanted to clarify since you are interested in how I do things, that I do not delete any song project folders along the way from the first to the last final one, until I am sure the final one is really completely done. So I might have 20 versions that I keep 2 copies of on the 2 external drives and only when I am totally done with the final mix and am sure I am satisfied, then I name that one with the song name, date and FINAL in the title. Only then do I delete the other 19 versions. I keep only the most current one on my desktop but do also back that up to the 2 external drives when I close up shop for the day. Like I said I normally only work on one song at a time so its easy for me in that aspect. 

Reason being, I have found, even with my most recent song, that sometimes I want to go back to and earlier version of the song file to check out a part of the song, in this case, a vocal part from one of the many vocal takes I made, (has also been a hunt for a better lead guitar take )because the one I selected was not fitting in the mix right much later down the road, so I wanted to see if one of the take lanes in an old version had a better tone and it did. Its infrequent that I need to dig back into say version 6 file when I am on say version 14 file but it has happened to me occasionally so I keep the old versions just in case. I probably save more often than most people do, I have no idea, but its just how my work flow has developed and so far so good!

[Gary Shore]

Robert/John/Treesha-

Good to see you guys continuing to post over here...agree 100% w/what you said Robert...

John,along w/checking out that video this AM which really made everything very easy to conceptualize.went over your last reply above and was focusing on the stuff relating to cloud storage as this is also something I'm looking into in this context...would be interested in more re-

3 hours ago, John Vere said:

the cloud storage. To bad this system is not exactly right for audio.

Treesha-

Just saw your post above once I posted this so decided to edit it  to thank you again for this kind of info,really like the focus on backups you're stressing and see the logic here now as well....

Edited August 31, 2021 by Gary Shore