tip: effective multi-disk DAW setup w/ cloud storage

quick tip i wanted to share.

in setting up a custom music computer, this was my latest process and i think it's a good one.

0- setup daw with 3 hard disks. i use a 128Gb ssd for my system/os drive, 1Tb disk for my data, and a 256Gb ssd for my library.

1- partition a 100Gb section of your Data drive. i call it the ghost drive.

2- pay 5 bucks a month for google drive. it's 100 gb, which is plenty for most daw project files. assign google drive to reference your ghost drive. this way you won't run out of cloud storage because you're limited by your partition.

3- put all project folders in this ghost drive. for ultimate security, make sure the projects are self contained in their folders and that they don't reference files that are outside of the drive.

4- use the 2nd ssd for your library - all samples and sampler libraries, etc. this is a "set and forget" drive. you can clone it to an external disk easily and use the same files on another computer.

5- use the rest of the Data disk however - for non-essential stuff that wouldn't kill you if you lost it.

any thoughts/suggestions to improve this, let me know. i think it's pretty clean.

Seems like a sound yet elegantly simple plot.

You've got yourself covered local and off site, cloud in this case. I use free Mediafire free as they give you 50GB, but it's a 200MB per upload limitation. So I should look into something that allows for larger uploads myself.

I've got 3 internals and 3 externals here, so sorting out a cloud solution is the last thing I need to do to have the safety net as you've set up in your system. Although I'm still all magnetic drives, I get 26-30 second boots and don't mind the 7200RPM access times, but I look forward to using SSD tech in the future.

Metatron72 wrote:Seems like a sound yet elegantly simple plot.

You've got yourself covered local and off site, cloud in this case. I use free Mediafire free as they give you 50GB, but it's a 200MB per upload limitation. So I should look into something that allows for larger uploads myself.

I've got 3 internals and 3 externals here, so sorting out a cloud solution is the last thing I need to do to have the safety net as you've set up in your system. Although I'm still all magnetic drives, I get 26-30 second boots and don't mind the 7200RPM access times, but I look forward to using SSD tech in the future.

SSD tech is pretty awesome now. It's not that expensive to buy a drive for you OS at the least (10$ for maybe 60-80GB). Depending on your DAW, you might not need to use the SSD for a library...I'm not 100% sure on this, but I'd imagine DAWs load samples into memory now so you would really only be gaining a tiny amount of time when initially loading samples (again, unless your just sifting through samples). Power overhead/sound is less though.

Nym wrote:quick tip i wanted to share.

in setting up a custom music computer, this was my latest process and i think it's a good one.

0- setup daw with 3 hard disks. i use a 128Gb ssd for my system/os drive, 1Tb disk for my data, and a 256Gb ssd for my library.

1- partition a 100Gb section of your Data drive. i call it the ghost drive.

2- pay 5 bucks a month for google drive. it's 100 gb, which is plenty for most daw project files. assign google drive to reference your ghost drive. this way you won't run out of cloud storage because you're limited by your partition.

3- put all project folders in this ghost drive. for ultimate security, make sure the projects are self contained in their folders and that they don't reference files that are outside of the drive.

4- use the 2nd ssd for your library - all samples and sampler libraries, etc. this is a "set and forget" drive. you can clone it to an external disk easily and use the same files on another computer.

5- use the rest of the Data disk however - for non-essential stuff that wouldn't kill you if you lost it.

any thoughts/suggestions to improve this, let me know. i think it's pretty clean.

Do you ever find that the DAW or google drive fight to try and upload/update a file? Does it ever cause slowdowns in your network? Or are you offline while working?

I've tried using DropBox as an "active backup sync" before but it just destroyed my network. Any files over a couple MB hog everything...may just need QOS settings.

Cloud storage is great for security but I was looking at getting an external SSD and having a mirror/sync setup between the drive and my desktop/laptop for my library...in that event I only ever need to have one drive with me to work and as soon as I plug it in everything would be in sync.

Do you ever find that the DAW or google drive fight to try and upload/update a file? Does it ever cause slowdowns in your network? Or are you offline while working?

the first part no, it's very smooth. i save a project and google drive snags it right away.

slowdowns? absolutely. for some reason google drive kills my network like nothing else. maybe it's because it's uploading instead of downloading. however, that was for the main push of all my projects. now that it's just updating a daw project folder every now and then, it's no problem.

Cloud storage is great for security but I was looking at getting an external SSD and having a mirror/sync setup between the drive and my desktop/laptop for my library...in that event I only ever need to have one drive with me to work and as soon as I plug it in everything would be in sync.

i like this. my goal was to be able to get at my projects no matter where i am and with any device.

it was also to make sure that i have the same setup for my live laptop. the trick is going to be NOT having both machines on/updating at the same time, otherwise chaos will ensue (multiple copies of files).

I think that's why I'll never get into online syncing. There is always the risk that you MAY work on one machine, then another, and the work between isn't in sync...Depending on your local network being able to push the data or just being online at all (making beats in the park?).

With an external drive you just have to always make sure that drive is with you. File sync can be automatic as soon as you connect, so I see less of a risk there. If I have to make sure my laptop/headphones are with me, than a drive is not an issue IMO.

That'll be fast, obviously make sure your sata ports and drives (especially the SSD) are Sata6 to really take advantage.

I've always had the same worries as the person above me for cloud storage (of any kind, but especially really sensetive stuff like this or photography), so I'd say before you absolutely commit to anything, test everything if possible (obviously 5 bucks a month isn't a problem, but finding out the last 8months worth of work has been corrupted after a crash would suck beyond words).

I'm also anal about crap like this, I'd spend the exta hundo and get a back up, external drive.

couldn't hurt. i have access to ~20 250Gb drives from work that aren't being used.

i've been using google drive for a couple months now and it's been highly effective. all it's doing is transferring project files, wavs, and .reapeaks. the peace of mind is great, not to mention that i can literally lose everything on the road and as long as i can find a high-power enough laptop and an internet connection, i can be back in business in relatively little time for live stuff (using an emergency wav only reaper project)

my ssd is probably not sata6 but it still loads stuff in kontakt way faster than it did when i housed everything in the same project drive. this machine is a real smoker now that it's stopped doing random reboots (i was running too many usb devices through a single hub!!!)