KVR Audio

P.T. · Post by **P.T.** » Sat Feb 05, 2005 8:52 am

I want to burn my samples and Vsts to CD-R.

The problem is that they don't fit on a single disk.

So, I'm wondering how to organize this to make it easy or reasonably easy.

I can't select the folders as they are too large.

If I split the folders then using them in my sequencer will be trouble.

If I just select 650 mb of stuff and put each group of 650 on a disk there will be organizational trouble when I add samples or VSTs to the folders later. I'll have to make lists of what's on the disks and then remember to burn the new stuff as soon as I add it to the folders or wind up having to search the folders and do a comparison with the lists. A lot of trouble.

How do YOU do it?

bwilbee · Post by **bwilbee** » Sat Feb 05, 2005 9:03 am

umm, maybe you should delete them all and buy a 4 track,

just do the selecting 650 mb thing and make a new folder for any thing new you add, i'm sure its possible to set you host to look in more than one place, from my experience most will read from any subfolders inside the main vst folder anyway..

JaseisMusic · Post by **JaseisMusic** » Sat Feb 05, 2005 9:32 am

I have a VST folder and within it there are 3 sub folders VST1 -2 and 3 each under 700 mb for backing up. Had to do a lot of moving around to organize and fill up the first 2 and the 3rd still has room. Either do that or get a DVD burner and back up the whole thing.

whyterabbyt · Post by **whyterabbyt** » Sat Feb 05, 2005 10:04 am

Removable hard-drive with Second Copy keeping the backup in sync with the current folder contents on shutdown, and a DVD burner copy (Ghost or straight copy, depending) every so often.

Orbitutle · Post by **Orbitutle** » Sat Feb 05, 2005 10:10 am

Hmm.. I never backuped anything.. Should I?
My comp never f**ked me over, and it's not even on the Internet..

whyterabbyt · Post by **whyterabbyt** » Sat Feb 05, 2005 10:17 am

The internet had nothing to do woth it. Hard drives fail. Motherboard drive controllers corrupt data. Mains spikes introduce errors.

If you have no problem with the possibility of losing all your work overnight, then no, you dont need to. But computers are not indestructible, and people do lose data.... Several years ago I lost ten years worth of files thanks to a very unlikely combination of events and I've been making damn sure it can never happen again ever since.

P.T. · Post by **P.T.** » Sat Feb 05, 2005 12:22 pm

I never thought of the subfolder idea. Sounds good.

Orbitutle · Post by **Orbitutle** » Sat Feb 05, 2005 12:29 pm

Hmm.. Okay.. Couldn't live with loosing all my work.. What about havin 2x SATA drives in RAID 1?
I think I should get a big portable hard drive for backup and transfering.. Would be nice to have!

whyterabbyt · Post by **whyterabbyt** » Sat Feb 05, 2005 12:44 pm

Mirroring is fine, even software mirroring, but depending on the controller/software it can have a performance overhead. And dont forget about the noise/heat implications of two drives running in tandem.

Jafo · Post by **Jafo** » Sat Feb 05, 2005 12:55 pm

Howdy.

Welcome to the wonderful world of backups! They suck ass, but they're your best friend.

Buy a DVD burner. Or a tape deck.

You could also try compression. RAR or any ZIP will work, but there are better ways. SFPACK and SFARK will losslessly squeeze the living hell out of SF2s; and GIGs have a decent compressed format option -- but if they're sufficiently simple you can convert them to SF2s and use SFPACK for superior results. UPX rocks ass; I think it works on all the major platforms now.

You could also get ruthless and delete what you don't use, until it all fits. Actually, culling your tools is a good practice in any case.

pljones · Post by **pljones** » Sat Feb 05, 2005 5:25 pm

I treat samples and software the same.

Anything from coverdisks or purchased on its own media doesn't get backed up.

Anything downloaded gets batched up for back-up (I've a "Pending" directory on a separate drive from my main software and samples, which are also on separate drives). Once I've enough to make it worth the time, I copy them to DVD. I'm on my third DVD... I tend to have a lot of versions of Firefox...

Configuration settings get backed up separately (allegedly "daily" according to the DVD title). Every now and then I bugger up the DVD and it gets cleared down. I've yet to fill one.

I've a "one click" back-up batch file for the "daily" backups that can write to my DVD drive, my wife's computer over the network or to a local directory depending on command line parameter (from the shortcut, of course).

I don't particularly like compression on backups - I've been bitten (in years past) by not having the right decompressor when the backup became essential. I was using UDF2 on my DVDs but I've fallen back to 1.5 for similar reasons - it's more portable. Using UDF might not be efficient on space but the disks are cheaper than my time. Finding the file I want without having to restore the entire backup is very valuable to me.

Mirroring isn't a backup. You click "save" when you meant "no save" and you're buggered. Being able to get last night's backup off DVD is very relaxing...

whyterabbyt · Post by **whyterabbyt** » Sat Feb 05, 2005 5:40 pm

pljones quoth

Anything from coverdisks or purchased on its own media doesn't get backed up.

Fair enough if you want to have to hunt out tons of disks and restore samples CD by CD, and hunt down every single installer disk, but I'd rather not have to. I got a lot of stuff.

Mirroring isn't a backup. You click "save" when you meant "no save" and you're buggered.

Its a live copy of the current state of your drive. Its not an archive but it is a backup. If your drive dies, you have a duplicate; your work is safe.

pljones · Post by **pljones** » Sat Feb 05, 2005 7:39 pm

whyterabbyt wrote:Fair enough if you want to have to hunt out tons of disks and restore samples CD by CD, and hunt down every single installer disk, but I'd rather not have to. I got a lot of stuff.

Me too - I don't use 99% of it. There's no way I'd bother to restore it all if I "lost" it. I'd do it piecemeal as I needed it.

whyterabbyt wrote:
Mirroring isn't a backup. You click "save" when you meant "no save" and you're buggered.
Its a live copy of the current state of your drive. Its not an archive but it is a backup. If your drive dies, you have a duplicate; your work is safe.

That's true... semantic difference: I'm not comfortable using "backup" for something that only works for a particular failure mode. RAID provides a redundant copy of the data - redundant in all cases except when one disk dies. I've never lost data through a disk dying, even an unmirrored one (indeed - I've only ever had one drive fail in 20 years: it was backed up, it was clearly dying, it was replaced and the backup restored).

Sascha Franck · Post by **Sascha Franck** » Sat Feb 05, 2005 7:43 pm

What are you doing with your VST plugin folder to become that big?
Put the sometimes required data files in it too?

MrM · Post by **MrM** » Sat Feb 05, 2005 7:54 pm

My VST plugin folder plus my plugin setting folder plus the folder with executable installation files (*.exe) are about 3,5 gig; I put all files in there, even help files.
I back up on DVDRW and on DVDR and on HD

Each new plugin is copied to the extra HD, and once a month copied to a DVDRW and once every 2 or 3 months to a DVDR.

Damn, I've more back up material then music material

How do you backup your sample and Vst folders?