To Delete or Not to Delete...that is the question
 

Apologies to Shakespeare for the subject heading...

I guess I've always been a bit of a packrat. I mean, I have old files everywhere in my house...in file cabinets, but you know the story...why do I have them at all.

I do the same thing on my computer. I ran into disk space issues last week when I was installing the new PTIEP 2.0 and realized I had used up all but about 32gig of my 500gig C drive (my PT sessions are all on the 1TB D drive). So it got me thinking about what do I really need to keep. I had my original downloads of PT LE 7, 8, 9 and 10...not to mention several other programs like Melodyne, Waves, etc.

And then I'm loaded to the gills with large WAV files of sound samples, plus bounce outs of takes of projects.

What do you guys do? Do you keep all that stuff? Delete? Or bounce over to a separate USB drive and delete of C drive?

I've tried to keep my studio PC "pure"...meaning its never on the internet except for downloading updates or online authorizations. And, besides being fully optimized, I don't have anything on it that isn't studio related.

I'm not having any performance issues with PT...but I would like to be better organized with my files and such. Open to suggestions. What do you guys do?

Thanks - a recovering packrat!

Re: To Delete or Not to Delete...that is the question
 

LOL

I know exacly what you are talking about :p

We have installers and sample packs and samples from all over the planet along with old sessions with large wav files attached so I feel your pain.

We just got a fourth WDC 3TB 7200 rpm drive and shoved it into an ice expansion USB3. Then I started on a long winding journey to catalogue all these files, installers, samples, bundles, old bouced MP3/Wav and so on and now all these files we thought we would never use again are nicely awaiting a re-visit for the future :p

I had songs and bouce files from songs dating back 12 yrs on 2 old Lacie 250GB drives that I found to be very nice and was really happy we still had those recordings along with all the wav files etc.

I mean all the installers from PT 6 and up are also on this new WDC and should we need to use any of them in the future we know where they are. I saw several members this past year asking for installers from everything from 6.4 and up thru 7-8-9-10 and having everything on the same drive makes us feel at ease with everything.

Also you never know when you wanna pull up something old or samples that you thought were never gonna be in style again seeing that music seems to go in cycles with the "old" 70-80's feel coming back with artists like Daft Punk, Bruno Mars, Josh Groban, Calvin Harris, Justin Timberlake and many many more so keeping everything is really worth that 100 + - dollars a big nice clean drive cost. :-)

This is just our take and I am sure there are others who do it differently but we have really talked about how great it is to have all these files on the same drive and in catalogues so they are easy to find for the future.

Best Regards and have a great weekend w/Halloween and whatnot :-)

Christopher

Re: To Delete or Not to Delete...that is the question
 

Back that drive up - twice. If it goes down, you've lost it all. And getting it back, if it's possible, won't be cheap.

Cheers,

Re: To Delete or Not to Delete...that is the question
 

Thanks, Chris. I do have complete back-ups of my C and D drives, so that's not the issue. Its just finding a good way to catalog old and store older files and such. Yes, I still have all the old installers on my back-up drive as well as in my Avid account, though I can't imagine why I'd need to ever re-install, say, PT 7.4 LE! :rolleyes: But its there if ever I would.

What I may do is get a separate 2 or 3TB USB drive and back up ALL my old audio files, bounces, and other samples/downloads to that in some logically filed order for easier location later and then make a copy of that offsite on Dropbox or some such.

At least the digital data back ups only take up a small amount of physical space in my house...I mean USB drives are not very big. Its the physical stuff I never throw away that takes up all the room. I have Computer Music Magazines going back several years. Old Wired magazines, 2 containers full of old patch cords, adapters and such, and because my wife and I are both avid readers, we have...and this is no exaggeration...over 4,500 books in our house (that's where I stopped counting!). and that doesn't include the books she has in her office! She's a college professor, so you can imagine! My motto is, if we don't own it...you don't need to read it! :D:D

Anyway, I'm determined to end my pack-rat ways and be better organized...both with the physical stuff AND the digital stuff! So that's what prompted me to ask what is really necessary to keep around and what can be safely deleted forever! :eek:

Re: To Delete or Not to Delete...that is the question
 

I use the C Drive only for OS and program/plugin installs - absolutely no data files ever. This keeps my Acronis backup images manageable. I use 3 Western Digital Black 1TB internal drives:

1. Partitioned as 100GB for "C Boot" and the remainder for "Misc Data". The "Misc Data" partition has data files like iTunes library, installers, documentation, pictures, Word docs, etc etc etc
2. Pro Tools sessions
3. VI Samples, Sony Vegas sessions

I backup everything to external drives - always at least 2 copies. Make sure to spin-up all ext drives fairly often. If the file sizes are reasonable, then I'll backup to data DVDs. I delete from internal drives only when I'm sure it's in at least 2 backup locations. Name/date everything in a manner that you'll be able to find later. While I do put the studio computer on the internet if necessary, I use a second computer for general internet/email/download tasks (plus a third computer - a laptop rig dedicated to remote Pro-Tools sessions). Hope this helps !!!

Re: To Delete or Not to Delete...that is the question
 

I like to keep my system drive at least 50% empty. Maybe that's overboard but I remember reading somewhere (SOS or PTE?) that its good to do this. I have all my samples and sample libraries for everything I can on their own drive (toontrack, kontakt, ik libraries etc), of course another separate audio drive for my sessions and then backup drives. oh I keep old installers etc on the same drive as my samples but thinking of moving all that to another drive too. No need for them on my system drive, the computer has to look through all that when I'm running my sessions..

Re: To Delete or Not to Delete...that is the question
 

I burnt all my old installers to disk.

Re: To Delete or Not to Delete...that is the question
 

I say get rid of all the old installers. Do you even have a computer that you can load the old install versions on?

As for old session files, contact those clients and ask if they would like to purchase the old sessions files for a nominal fee. Tell the you will be deleting the sessions either way.

Re: To Delete or Not to Delete...that is the question
 

... or get an account with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and look into using their Glacier service: cheap, redundant cloud storage for files you rarely, if ever, plan to use. Restores are deferred by a few hours and fees are weighted towards the files you recover, so I recommend you study the charging model/tariff carefully. Glacier can be mixed with S3 (more expensive storage but immediately available content) which you can integrate with a Mac using something like the Panic Transmit application. You'll need decent internet upload bandwidth (or at least access to this temporarily) however.

Re: To Delete or Not to Delete...that is the question
 

Lots of good ideas guys, thanks. I think I am going to the C drive for program/system files only from now on. My D drive is PT sessions and samples only. I'm going to put any downloads and such onto separate USB drives and delete off C drive altogether. And then I'm going to back up C drive to separate USB drive and sane with D drive and both of those and the others to a cloud...not sure which one yet.

I'm well on the way with the process now. Somebody ask me how I'm doing with it in a week or see to keep me on it!


Dragon Rock Productions
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