File Management for Music Production (with External Hard Drives)

This video walks through a file management system optimized for music production. It walks through where to store sample libraries, VST, plugins, project files, DAWs, and if they should go on your laptop/pc or on an external hard drive with the goal of getting the best performance out of your setup for music production.

As a music producer, it can be a bit overwhelming to research the best organization for where to install applications, VSTs, etc. I've tried to distill everything I've come across here into an explanation and walkthrough that I definitely wish I had found earlier in my music production journey.

We'll talk through a setup using your main laptop/pc and 2 external SSD drives (solid state hard drives), a couple options for how to backup your project files or sample libraries (physical drive and/or cloud storage), and some general tips on the hardware to connect everything.

Affiliate Product Links (from this Video):

Free Templates & Presets:

"Ear Drops" Sample Pack:

Support My Content / Buy Me a Coffee:

My Setup:

00:00 - Intro
00:16 - A typical starter setup for music production (we'll switch away from this)
01:08 - Why should you use multiple hard drives for music production
03:12 - Where should projects, DAWs, and sample libraries be installed/saved for music production
04:10 - Why use SSDs instead of HDD for music production hard drives
04:37 - Cables and docks for connecting hard drives to laptop for music production
05:28 - How to backup project files, samples, and more for music production
09:24 - Summary of best file management setup for music production using 2 external SSD hard drives and cloud storage backups
10:23 - How to format external SSD hard drive for MacOS

I hope this helps you with your own setup for music production!
- Cradle Cat

[victormendoza]

I've been trying to organize many years of work (charts/audio/business, etc) and you're a TECHNO-BLESSING! Thank you!

[zacharymenard]

Such great info, getting a new Mac and finally getting my organization in place, very quick and easy answers to age old questions, keep it up!!!

[GeraldLawMusic]

Very helpful. I'll be organizing my files this weekend. Thank you!

[andrewlittlewood]

Going to do this now following your video!

[hmcvm]

This is amazingly helpful - thanks so much for sharing!

[marcell]

backblaze for project file is goated btw

[TheAllang]

Excellent logic to maximize bandwidth and safety

[richyrich]

I appreciate the info and have already followed this methodology. I too am a Mac user, but with Ableton Live 11. I avoid VST's but am looking to purchase SD3 which is quite large. How do I best separate out the the library portion of the program to my external SSD? Can it be done during install or post install? Thanks for any advice

[VEXUS]

Great video! I would not recommend Google Drive for this process, however. Google Drive only saves backups as "Computers". So if you change computers or upgrade or switch operating systems you have to kinda start over with backing up. These files are not deleted but they are only related to the computer they originated from not the drives in which they are housed. When you start re-inserting this drive on a new computer it starts everything over and there is no way to combine the files. The way around this is to be very selective with your choices in backing up, but if you're backing up a whole drive you'll spend hours or more just re-backing up your previous sessions and loops. It becomes a bit of a mess. I would recommend Backblaze it also has unlimited storage.

[far]

Great vid, thanks! Can you recommend a high quality docking station that will allow me to connect multiple external hds through? You mentioned those, generally, in your vid. So far I’ve had to connect any external hds directly to computer as any usb splitters or multi port docs I’ve tried don’t seem to recognize external sds. Point me in the right direction if you can. Thanks!

[EBCArts]

Hey man this is an amazingly helpful video. Thank you so much! One question - say you are producing music on a MacBook Pro, and you’re starting a new song. Would you plug in the SSD for sample/content libraries, make the song, and then switch to the other SSD to save the file? Or do you have both SSDs plugged in at the same time with a docking station (I heard you mention that in the video). I guess my main question is how to avoid the DAW saying something like “media files are missing” when I open a project because the samples are on another drive. So I’m wondering how you avoid that. Hopefully the question makes some bit of sense… let me know if I can clarify. Thank you very much for the valuable content!!

[vidark.]

Oh one more thing - could you do a video on organising samples and vst's as well? Like I think it's not really necessary with anything else than vst3's but i still have three folders of vst's many with the same plugins. Also not sure what I like best when it comes to naming/folders. WOuld like to hear your thoughts!

[vidark.]

I have a 2tb macbook pro 2019 with a lot of trouble. Will start using your system soon - but I wonder; since 2tb harddrive is excessive for your system - would partitioning this drive and use it for lets say works in progress, and some favorite samples, do me any good? Also. - did you have a recommendation for a dock..?

[JonPattersonMusic]

Great I just bought a M2 Studio with the base storage. Was trying to figure out what the best way to configure Cubase and SD3 as the libraries are quite large

[ryanlesser]

I could be wrong, but I think that you cannot sync multiple drives to Google Drive. I am having the issue currently where my internal MacBook pro drive is full and I would like to keep artwork on my internal drive and music production on and external SSD... but have all of it syncing with Google Drive (which is similar to the diagram at the end of your video). According to my research, this is not possible. If you know of a way to do this, please let me know. Thanks.

[cedricledore]

So which usb dock do you have ? Which trademarks are the quality ones ?

[NATmusic]

Ok but didn't you have any problems setting up an external ssd with you projects in it for cloud backup? I tried using google drive and it made couple of files in the projects corrupetd

[Outlabyrinth]

Super Nice

Could you do the same with VST ? Installed on external drive ?

[zakaroonetwork]

Please, What App are you using to Illustrate this presentation? Thank you.