Hello there,
I am just setting up Cubase 13 Artist on a new system. Would like to get people’s opinions on how best to set up Cubase if I had one fast M2 drive, a few SSD’s and a lot of Sata hard drives.
My new system has this, so far:
C: OS and Program files (2Tb M2) - just Cubase and Komplete base files.
I know what would be the best thing - lots of M2 drives, but I’ve only got 1 and have two 1Tb SSD’s and a bunch of slower Sata hard drives. What would the best way to utilise them in a new Cubase-centred setup, considering this computer is for music only? And if I bought one more M2 drive or SSD, what would be the best way of using it?
One suggestion:
Put the OS on one of the 1 TB drives, put Komplete on the 2 TB drive.
Use the second 1 TB drive for projects and the like.
Buy a caddy for the SATA drives and use them for external backups.
Hi, thanks for your input. I’m trying to optimise for speed and file access by using particular drive types for particular functions - when you say put the OS on a 1TB drive, what type do you mean? Same about the 2Tb drive.
I can have up to 12 internal drives in my system - at least one of which would be a backup drive. Is there a reason you’d have them external?
Your 1 TB drives are SSDs, which are plenty fast enough for the OS, and your 2 TB M2 drive would be better suited for sample libraries, which is what I’m assuming Komplete is.
The only stuff you should have on the C: drive are the OS and your programs, certainly no libraries. There should be as little data stored there as possible. Steinberg, take note!
I only have room for four internal drives, old fashioned HDDs for storage (22 TBs) with an M2 for the OS and another for sample libraries. But I had two older drives lying around in a drawer, so I pressed them into service (another 8 TB).
My philosophy is to use your fastest drive as your system drive (OS and applications). That would be your m.2 drive.
Your second priority should be where you record audio onto. In practice, that’s where you store your projects.
Thirdly, sample libraries. The faster your drive is here, the faster your projects will load. If your projects use a lot of sample libraries, it’s a good idea to use multiple drives for samples. Try to split it up so that a typical project is reading samples from as many quick drives as possible.
E.g. if you dedicate two drives for sample libraries, put your most used library on drive A, second most used library on drive B, third most used on drive A and so on.
If your projects does not include recorded audio, or a very small amount of them, I would prioritize samples over audio recordings.
Use your HDD spinners for backups or put them in a raid configuration if you have a lot of them.
Yes, ideally you would not have your backup drive connected regularly to the computer, only for the time of backup. This minimizes the risk of ransomware having a chance to also encrypt your backup.
There is also the idea that you keep one backup in a remote place outside of your building, so that you can get your data back even in case of a fire (a cloud backup is another possibility for that).
I have a three stage backup. One image backup to a USB disk. Then a file based backup of my data to a Raspberry Pi, then one of my important data to a cloud (well, just a hosted server I have)
Oh, and I have one 1TB M2 for OS, and one 2TB M2 for samples and Cubase projects, but then I don’t own that many samples…