Strategic backup plan - file locations, storage, destinations

C.F.Christopher · January 3, 2025, 3:39pm

Hello all, and Happy New Year!
I’m hoping you guys can tell me the location all of the important config. data files on a Windows 10/11 system using Cubase 12 Pro. First a litte intro.

Three days ago now I rebuilt my studio PC from a 4 core 16Gb RAM bla bla bla to a 12 core, 32Gb RAM bla bla bla. The old machine wasn’t as consistant as it should have been. I think it was a combo of hardware and the WIndows installation but later on this week I’ll do a hardware diaognostic on the older hardware.

Due to way too much going on besides this rebuild and the shear amount of software from DAWs to drivers, installed on any studio PC, I messed up. I didn’t realize how many things saved during a Cubase project doesn’t actually get saved to the profile of the project itself. So I lost a lot of configuration settings and other prefrences. I’ve been an IT pro since the early 90s but never dug in deep on the Studio PC. I think this is mostly due to how little I do a studio production PC over from scratch. Although I did have a few things in place to ensure that things work correctly once restored I didn’t even come close to how much of this data I didn’t backup or even know where it was located.

The plan already in place is to automate the backup process once a day at 1am for the configuration files, about 200Mb and 2am for the backup data, about 187GB, on the Music drive that stores all project files in Cubase and related data.

I may have to contact each software vendor to learn where the files are stored but so far I’ve narrowed things down to two locations. Actually three. The AppData/Roaming and /Local folders and the Document folders but I’m sure there is more.

Here’s what I have so far. I’ve been using a free and well designed backup program for at least 16 years. You guys may want to look into this as well. Here’s a link if you want to check it out. I use the older Cobian Backup instead of the Cobian Reflector because the CB doesn’t rely on “.net” and since some of the music related software does rely on the “.net” utility I would rather not have the backup software rely on this because of potential conflicts in version of the “.net” when it comes to what is required by each to work correctly. CobianSoft - The home of Cobian Backup

I need to make sure I understand where configuration files are being stored by default on a Windows system so I can ensure I grab them for a scheduled backup.
Here’s a short list of things I want to backup for Cubase. I’m sure I’ve forgotten some things so please let me know if I missed something here:

Color Scheme
Key Commands /Hot Keys
UI custom settings like transport, layout and tool bars
Prefrences and “Studio” menu setting like MIDI port and audio channel assignments for the external hardware, etc.

I use X-Keys macro system rather than StreamDeck. This system is programmed to use the existing default key commands for Cubase but also tons of other custom key commands that make life a lot easier. They use custom configuration text files. I’ll be looking into where this software stores it’s default config data so I can grab this as a backup also.

Then there’s the massive amount of other software. Where are all the plugins stored? Since I wasn’t all that educated on the locations of plugin, since it seems to variy from vendor to vendor I don’t quite have a handle on this yet.

I have three hard drives on this system.

SSD 250Gb OS drive (Internal)
SSD 900Gb Music drive (removable Caddy)
2Tb storage/backup drive (removable Caddy)
OS drive of course is self explainatory. The Music drive is where all of the projects reside. This is the drive where Cubase runs/finds all of the project files and the Storage drives has all of the setup files for everything. This drive is broken down into StudioSetupFiles, OS drive backup, Music drive back folders. It also contains all of the downloaded setup installation files for everything on the PC. This includes everything from LibreOffice and Trackball configuration/drivers to audio interface and backup software setup files.

I’ve attached some photo so others might be inspired to come up with a backup plan for their system. The photos show the caddy removable Music and Backup/Storage drives. Also shows the X-Keys that I integrated into the X-Touch control surface which also needs to have it’s custom configuration files backed up along with the Aruba pad controller that will trigger AD2. This device also needs it’s custom pad setup backed up.

Next is the Cobian Backup sofware configuration.
You could have a single “Task” file for everything but since the Music drive will be backed up to a different destination compared to the OS drive I have them setup using different Task files. I’m going to show four windows for each Task. One is the OS drive stuff and the other is the Music drive stuff. You can compress the data but I never do this because in the event of a data restore (even if it’s a single config. file) I want to be able to simple go to the backup drive and copy the file over to the working directory of that file without having to extract file file from a zip, tar, or raw compression file.

A few more to show the second Task file.

I know this post a really long but I think others will benefit from this information and I know I’ll feel alot better once I know that everything is being backed up and that I have the data to restore if a “do over” is necessary. I just wated at least 12 hours just getting everything working and looking the way it did before my big mistake.
Thank you guys,
Chris

MattiasNYC · January 3, 2025, 4:42pm

Thanks for sharing.

My personal take on this and based on my experience is that it is far easier to just back up entire drives as images to a central, very large backup drive, plus the cloud. As long as the backup software is searchable the configuration involves far fewer steps and there is no need to worry about where any given file is installed. It’s just images.

mlib · January 3, 2025, 5:01pm

How often do you backup each drive and how long does it take? I’m guessing sample library drives (if you have such) doesn’t get backed up as often (or ever) as the drive with projects and documents?

MattiasNYC · January 3, 2025, 5:12pm

Was that question addressed to me?

C.F.Christopher · January 3, 2025, 5:27pm

hmmm not a bad idea! Well for sure if you did an image of the drive you would of course have everything…but you couldn’t restore a courupt file…but you could simply boot from the image backup drive and you’re off and running. Hmm now you got me thinkin.

Oh wait, but if an image of the drive is made as the backup you would have to image the OS drive and the Music drive in order to get everything.

Thanks for the different point of view Matt! I’m really going to have to consider that. Maybe do it in conjuection with the file by file backup. I have to say, if I ever lost this data I think I would walk away from music completly because I can’t replace that stuff. Some of this stuff is from 1991 and there is even VHS audio cassettes that have 120minues of music/song ideas…all of it is stored on the system. Scary to think about loosing it. As it is now, I don’t know what I don’t know…so I hope all of my stuff is intact. I haven’t gotten that far to know yet.
Thanks Matt,
C

C.F.Christopher · January 3, 2025, 5:32pm

hey Mlib,
I’m not sure if that question was for me or Matt. If it was for me I can answer.
The backups get ran automatically. The OS drive with it’s configuration data and other settings data is backed up at 1am it is usually around 200Mb. An hour later the Music drive gets backed up at 2am and is about 190Gb. My sample library is on the Music drive but backed up on the Storage drive. Cubase project files are also on the music drive. Oh the Music drive only took 32 minutes to back up but that is partly because of my system. It uses SSD drives for the music drive with a transfer rate of like 6Gb/sec. On my old system it would take more like an hour to back up that much data.

I all depends on where you place these files that determine how often things get backed up. Cobian Backup or Cobian Reflector has worked very very well for many years even on some of commercial customers I have for IT work. This software is backing up POS and QuickBook servers. If it’s good enough for that stuff it’s good enough for my studio PC.
C

mlib · January 3, 2025, 5:32pm

Yes, sir.

MattiasNYC · January 3, 2025, 5:42pm

You can do either.

I use Macrium Reflect and the backup set is a bunch of files that all relate to each other. It takes a little bit of brain power to understand how it works in the backup software but at the end of it all the gist of it is that I can basically mount the image as a drive in the OS and then browse it as if it was a drive.

So lets say you lose your 900GB project drive and buy a replacement. You install and format the replacement and then mount the image of the backed up drive that failed. You could choose to just browse that image and copy/paste what you need onto your new drive.

Alternative you could restore the image as a whole onto the new drive (though there may be some restrictions or caveats due to drive make/model/size).

Yes. I have everything scheduled. Pulling from memory my daily includes one backup of the system drive and one of the primary work drive. Then less frequently I back up some of my other drives, simply because them failing is not a big thing and because they get updated less frequently.

In the event of a failure I would pick the backup set that corresponds to the drive that failed.

(time to cleanup my work drives…lol…)

I highly recommend adding cloud backup then. I know it’s an extra cost, at least potentially, but I also know some people have lost their stuff because of severe unexpected weather events. Things like fire, water and so on. Wind. Having it offline is a great comfort. I use Backblaze btw.

Again though, it’s money… There are probably decent free options.

MattiasNYC · January 3, 2025, 5:48pm

System drive and main work drive get backed up every day. Macrium Reflect allows you to select in detail how your backups should be done. It gets a bit complicated (if you want it to).

Basically I run a full backup of each every few months. “Full” is exactly what it sounds like and copies literally everything on the drive. Every Monday for the work drive the backup is “Differential”, and that means that it backs up everything that is different that Monday compared to the last full backup. This one will be bigger the further away you are from the last full backup. Doesn’t take as long as a full backup, but some amount of time. The rest of the time it is “incremental” which is the difference between that day and what was backed up the day before. So just what has been added throughout the workday essentially. Very quick.

I have one work drive that I dump all my downloaded AAFs on plus video files. That gets backed up once a week or so. I can’t remember. The Library drive is pretty much the same and contains SFX, music, installers and so on.

Then in addition to all of those backups using the local software and the local backup drive I use Backblaze cloud backup which runs every night. That one backs up all of the drives incrementally. The first time running that it took days to complete since it all relies on internet upload speeds. Now it’s fast enough since it’s less data that hasn’t been backed up, plus I have Gbit upload.

C.F.Christopher · January 3, 2025, 6:12pm

yeah well that’s fine but I personally would rather backup locally due to what you said. Internet speeds but also the fact that the data isn’t on the property with me. I could simply have a remote backup done to my office server too. At least this way there are two locations keeping things safe at the alternative locations but for me with the amount of data online backup isn’t going to work for me but the tought of two locations is very appealing for sure!

I think I still would like to learn all of the locations that Cubase and it’s plugin store it’s user data because in the event that of data crouption, even on a single file, having a backup that offers a simple “copy” type of backup without compression or proprietary backup algorythums is great because I’ve had to restore a single file before and if you have an image or compressed backup mothod used can be a very time customing thing if you had to decompress data to obtain a single or several files to restore. But I do like the image idea as a “the sky is falling” failsafe…so thank you for the reminder of that.

One other thing is I limit my drive size to as small as possible. At least for my working drives like Music because the larger it is the more data to be lost and the longer it takes to image or back up that drive. I know these huge drives initially feel like a no brainer but I’ve run into many situations that customers have huge drives. There is TONS of data and it takes hours to backup. If this data was compressed or as an image it would take even more time to get to the data you need so I don’t have any drives over 2tb. I will run out of storage but that’s why I use the removable Caddy type of drive interface. It’s accessible from outside the PC and most of these SATA caddies are 'hot swapable" so you don’t even have to shut the machine down…although I wouldn’t do that as it’s not work the risk!
Thanks Matt.
C

Malhomme · January 4, 2025, 11:32pm

Many things a re saved in the preference files, for which Steinberg has a dedicated page (because it is a mess). But that does not covers things such as VST presets for effects or instrument done withing cubase, that I still did not find.