Organize Your Data:

• Organize your files into three categories.
  1. OS, Software, and Plugins
  2. Sample Library Content
  3. Project (DAW) Resources & Files

<aside> 🧠 At the moment, it is easiest for me and my brain to think of each of these categories existing on a dedicated hard drive. Hard drives are definitely large enough to hold all this things, but I think it is easier to manage the different backup strategies for each category if each is a physically separate hard drive.

</aside>

• Have a back-up system for each category.
  1. OS, Software, and Plugins = Bootable Backup and matching hard drive of at least the same size and performance. More space will allow you to keep a bigger archive of deleted or altered files. You only need to update your bootable backup BEFORE you make any changes to your OS, software, or plugins. Then after testing you can update your bootable to match.
  2. Sample Library Content = Standard backup hard drive of at least the same size and performance. More space isn’t really needed.
  3. Project (DAW) Resources & Files = This is the really important stuff! This is the stuff that is uniquely yours and can’t be redownloaded/etc. As a result you want to always run local + non-local (cloud) backups at regular time intervals. Time interval should equal the amount of time you can afford to loose.

Working vs. Archival Data:

The more work you do, the more your project related data will grow. At some point, it will become too much to have everything with you and in your multi-backup system (local + cloud). At this time it will make sense to further divide your data into two categories: working and archive.

• Working: You should manage this the same way that you have always managed your Project (DAW) Resources & Files.
• Archival Data: When you are completely done with a project and are confident that you wont need to return to it any time soon you can migrate it from your really fast SSD and multi-backup system to slower hard drives that you keep in two secure locations (🔥 ideally not in the same building 🔥).

Data Management Systems

I keep my system pretty simple. I use ChronoSync to manage both my automated and manual data backups to my collection of hard drives and dropbox as my “second location” or “cloud” storage.

At some point, I’ll probably either purchase or build my own home file server or NAS. These are basically collections of hard drives that are configured to store, backup, and make your data accessible either over your local network or from anywhere in the world. There are lots of options out there, but something like this is a good example of what you might consider starting with.

DAW Project Archiving

The only two file types I think we can safely assume will still exist in 10 years from now are .WAV and .MID (MIDI). DAWs, plugins, sample libraries, and synths will all come and go. So when you finish a project consider exporting several versions of all the individual tracks/sounds as both .WAV files (with and without FXs) and as MIDI files so that if you need to rebuild the project in the twenty years from now. You could get pretty close no matter what software/hardware you will be using then.

Useful Resources:

[RAID Explained](https://www.techtarget.com/searchstorage/definition/RAID#:~:text=Brien Posey-,What is RAID%3F,the goal of providing redundancy.)