Your drum sample collection is probably one of the most valuable music production assets you have. Could you afford to lose hundreds or maybe even thousands of drum samples? A lot of us don\’t back up our songs or sound patches, much less the drum samples that have made our songs so unique. There are probably hundreds of songs in the average beat maker\’s computer that depend on specific drum samples, and a lot of times the samples are not saved along with the project. Result? Total chaos if the samples disappear!
If you plan to store all of your music, samples and documents on your computer hard drive and nowhere else, you\’ll be in for a lot of trouble some time down the track. Computer vendors have advertised the five-year lifetime rate (mean rate, not average rate) for hard drives as a push to consumers: you should back up sooner rather than later. Don\’t keep putting it off. In any case, you should not store everything just on this drive, especially if it\’s your main one, too.
If financial difficulties or other reasoning prevents you from going beyond your main hard drive, you will need to look after a few different maintenance pivots. One of these is the defrag process. In short, it moves files that are similar to the same spot on the hard drive, allowing it to search and seek less when going for the same things over and over. This will increase the life of your hard drive. In fact, it will maximize it.
Using flash drives to store your drum samples is a big no-no. For storage, it\’s great! Most will last between 5 and 10 years and up to a lot more than that, so if you\’re not constantly using the flash drive, spending a few dollars (literally! Maybe 2 or 3 dollars!) can get you enough space to store most of your drum samples. A downside is that it\’s quite easy to lose! Keep it behind your monitor speakers perhaps.
Rewritable DVDs and CDs are good for back-ups, but not for live use, as most programs won\’t be able to write to them on-the-fly. If you have to use these for backups (or already do), make sure they\’re being stored in a dry, cool location, out of direct sunlight and any moisture.
Having a second hard drive can be a total solution for a lot of music producers. If you have a PC that only has one hard drive, consider getting a second one. It won\’t just be a backup solution, but you can simply store all of your files on it for performance. When programs call on it for music files, your main hard drive still has the operating system (Windows, Mac) files, so there are two completely separate streams, freeing your music hard drive from unnecessary stress and maximizing its life.
Stop procrastinating, and make rap beats now. Right now. You see, making rap beats isn\’t exactly hard, so there are no excuses.
