With my FM recordings and with my few other sources to get digital uncompressed files I come to the situation that I need to rearrange the data stoppage for my Digital Audio Workstation (hate the word DAW but it is what they use). I have currently around 700G of used space and to add more drivers to my dedicated audio mashie does not look practical anymore. It would be not to mention that to manage the space between the drivers is kind of become complicated.

I have 5 drives: Recording Drive, Opera/Vocal Drive, Small Orchestral Drive, Large Orchestral Drive, Best Performances Drive. They have different filling tempo and need some to be mirrors and changed in size. I have also a dedicated machine that run those drivers… As I said complicated and not continent…..

Now, since the size of this thing is growing up I wonder if I need/can to change the way how I use the thing. So, now the people who do DAWs store thier files? If I buy an external drives array with swappable drives that would use USB-2.0, firewire or a network cable connector then will it be sufficient enough to play >88khz? (I will still do recording to a local ATA drive). Any consideration to sound quietly if I use USB-2.0? I am familiar with big, noisy and expansive driver towers that used for database applications – I hope I do not need to buy them…

An alterative I wonder if it exists some kind of remote data storage that would run own IP and have a slot to plug my Lynx-16 sound card in there? Then I would be able to put it on my network and run recording/editing with remote processor. I do very little editing BTW, so it might not be so convent to edit it.

So, can some advise what usually people do and what are the most recent “better practices” in DAWs organization nowadays?

Well, I did some research and consulted with my network people and it looks like it might be unfortunately-expensive project. Still it will not be what I want.

They recommended me to go for what they call NAS (network attach storage). It tuned out that the drives must be identical.... that offsets some flexibility. I was looking at 3TB storage with 4x750gb SATA drives and there are plenty of them on market. The sad parts are that those NAS -devises are over $1500. The good part is the I might get rid of my big box and use instead a mini PC with juts one sound card and one system/recording HD. That brings me back the same question: who those network attach storages (since they have 1G memory aboard, network card and little processor running RAID logic and serve IP address, do not have bigger processor, video adapter and have one slot for a my sound card? If I have a large box with disk array and tiny computer to mange it then why they should not be integrated and driven from my well selected (according to noise) external PS? I would have no problem to take the tine mini-PC motherboard and to stick it atop of my NAS… but how would it be different from built bust another machine with 4x750gB drives?

I added another 1T drive to my DAW (the 88/24 fills space fast) and I came to an interesting problem.

I have a few drives to store the recordings on my DAW: orchestral drive, chamber drive, instrumental drive, opera drive, recording drive. I store files as Drive/Folder/File. I give to the Folders the same name as the file and create the folders at the day of the recording.  So, going into a drive and ordering the folders by Creation Date I have good chronological view over my recording on the drive.

Now I added one drive and I need to remap the files. Doing it I need to move the file from one drive to other. This killed my Creation Date that is unacceptable. Different tools meant to deal with this problem (MS Robocopy and alike) do preserve the file dates but do not preserve the folders names. I was trying to backup and to restore- the same problem – even though I do not want to compress the files. It looks like Windows core has control over it. So, I wonder what to do.

I was even thinking to copy the files conventionally and then to write up my own utility that would enumerate the files on the source drive, find by name the copied files on targeted drive and usual Win API or .NET file objects to reset the target file’s Created and Modified dates. Still, I wonder if the solution have already exists out there…