Backing up Cakewalk projects

[RICHARD HUTCHINS]

Hi all,

I'm back after a hiatus due to arthritis in my thumb stopping me playing either  piano or guitar;  and I was  so utterly  p***sed off I didn't do anything musical for months, too painful, too upsetting.

 Anyways, I'm gradually starting to do stuff again and I now realise  backup system is not really up to scratch.

I recall  John ( Cactus Music) had a good video on this but he doesn't support Cakewalk tutorials now ( what did I miss?)

So, what's the recommended consensus on backing up? Or is it depending on the poster's opinion? I'm not that technical but...no backup, no mercy as they say!

 

Richie

[Amberwolf]

What kind of projects do you usually create?  All audio recorded in?  All MIDI with hardware external synths?  MIDI with internal synths in the project?  Some variation(s) on these?  Something different?

How do you usually save your files while working?  Do you just save over the file and only have one per project?  Do you always use SaveAs and make a new version of the file?  Do you use per-project audio folders, or just one giant audio folder for everything?   Some variation(s) on these?  Something different?

Do you want to save projects so you can always reproduce them identically whenever you work on them, no matter how old they are?  Or do you only care about the current project while you're working on it?  Etc? 

 

How you create, use, and save the projects makes a difference in the backup strategy, partly because there is different data generated (and different amounts), and partly because some of them may require saving the configuration of the whole system (with some form of manual notes) to be sure you're able to reproduce the project later.

[RICHARD HUTCHINS]

Hi

Usually audio files, I do a lot of backing tracks downloaded from Karaoke Version in individual stems,  ie drums, bass, vox all on seperate tracks, and edit these down to an MP3 for gigs. Not much midi these days, a little synth or piano which I plug in to my Steinberg UR22  interface from my Juno Keys. So not sophisticated.

[DeeringAmps]

You can do a “save as” per project to a backup drive internal and/or external. 
OR just pickup your entire projects folder and drop that to, again, an internal and/or external drive. This assumes all project folders are in one folder. For example, on my system I have a dedicated drive (I label Audio) on which is a folder ( labeled CWP) where all my Cakewalk projects reside. 
HTH,

t

[RICHARD HUTCHINS]

Thanks seems sensible, I'll also back up online as well as a hard drive

[RICHARD HUTCHINS]

All sorted, thanks all

[Terry Kelley]

I just do an xcopy to another drive. No compression. Just a copy.

[Glenn Stanton]

i use "Free File Sync" (and donate periodically) as it's very easy to set up multple jobs and run them daily, weekly etc. project files, presets, FX, CAD files (for my studio design work), and various other folders.

i have my main disks for all local files, then back up to other disks which are sync to the cloud providers (thus avoiding file contention with the cloud services as well as second local backup). periodically swap out the cloud disks and resync to have offline backups (usually 1-2 years to replace my 4TB SSD for the cloud drive). and closely monitor my Samsung 2TB SSD (project and content etc) for wear levels and replace  & clone when needed (usually every 3 years now).