External Drive

Cam42 · 03-05-2010, 07:49 PM

Paragon Backup & Recovery 10 is a great free imaging and partitioning tool

Use your new drive in a USB enclosure, run the software to image your internal drive to the new internal. You may have to re-activate some software (confirm anyone?), but that's not a big deal.

**scared2mosh** · 03-05-2010, 08:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tigerfan88

I also second buying two drives. Heck, you could even consider getting an internal and an external, and installing the internal as a secondary drive to store your files, and back up on the external. I did that with my old machine and it was pretty easy.

I do this... it works great.

Demon_Hunter · 03-07-2010, 08:32 PM

ok, bit of a problem.

I got the drive to work, and Im recording projects to the external drive now.

The problem?

If I "move" a file from the drive back to my computer it still wont play without the external drive connected.
Thats pretty useless since I need my projects to be mobile. I tried 3 or 4 different times and couldnt make it work correctly. I am now at a loss, and I need one of these projects for tommorow night.

**Gustin** · 03-07-2010, 08:49 PM

What software are you using?

Are you moving the entire project folder or just the recording file? You need to move the entire project folder otherwise the audio will still be sitting in the folder on the external hard drive. (The recording file just tells the software the settings, where the audio is and thins like that)

Demon_Hunter · 03-07-2010, 08:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gustin

What software are you using?

Are you moving the entire project folder or just the recording file? You need to move the entire project folder otherwise the audio will still be sitting in the folder on the external hard drive. (The recording file just tells the software the settings, where the audio is and thins like that)

This is probably what I was doing wrong then.

The software is Reaper.

The thing is, I dont see a project folder perse in the external drive, it has each of the individual wav files listed, but not under any particular file, and I have .wav files from 2 different projects sitting in there.

**Gustin** · 03-07-2010, 08:59 PM

Good practice is to set up a new folder for each and every project you start and save all data in that folder. Most software will do this for you automatically (I think Reaper does as well, but perhaps a setting got screwed up somewhere).

Demon_Hunter · 03-07-2010, 09:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gustin

Good practice is to set up a new folder for each and every project you start and save all data in that folder. Most software will do this for you automatically (I think Reaper does as well, but perhaps a setting got screwed up somewhere).

Alright, I created a folder for it that should have contained all the information for the project, and I was actually able to get it to open, but even though all the tracks show up and I can see there corresponding .Wav files listed on the tracks, the actual audio information shows offline.

So apparently I still did something wrong.

**Gustin** · 03-07-2010, 09:22 PM

Sorry I should have been more clear... that was for the future. You're more or less stuck with whatever file structure your project has (unless you want to go through the work of manually linking up those files). Your best bet is to copy over the folder that you need and then just remember this headache in the future

Why do you need to copy the folder back on to your OS drive in the first place... the external drive is mobile too..

Demon_Hunter · 03-08-2010, 10:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gustin

Sorry I should have been more clear... that was for the future. You're more or less stuck with whatever file structure your project has (unless you want to go through the work of manually linking up those files). Your best bet is to copy over the folder that you need and then just remember this headache in the future

Why do you need to copy the folder back on to your OS drive in the first place... the external drive is mobile too..

It is mobile, but its also one more thing to carry around, which is why I wanted to move the file over, and then just put it back when Im done.

I think Ill do that tonight though, just take it with me.

Thanks for your help. I appreciate it.

I did realize this morning though that I made a huge mistake before going to bed. I copied the single project file into the new folder, but none of the audio files, which is (im pretty certain) why they wouldnt play after I disconected the external drive. And now I feel like an even bigger n00b.

**Gustin** · 03-08-2010, 11:10 AM

Yep. That's why it's good practice to dedicate a new folder to each new project because then you can just grab the whole folder and not worry about which file belongs to what.

There are performance reasons for using an external hard drive for recording though. Streaming audio data (especially larger projects) is very strenuous on a hard drive. Especially a laptop hard drive (which is typically slower). You usually want to keep your audio data on a separate hard drive from the operating system system to keep performance issues to a minimum.