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Ok so i googled, and i also used the dsf search to no avail. I was trying to find a sample organization thread that ran back about a year ago. Cant find it so im gonna start another.
Here goes...

I believe a well organized and fluent sample library for drums and the like is gold. Its a little luxury in that can make music quicker and more productive.
The reason I have started this thread was to discuss how you are using your sample libaries.
Myself? I use an external firewire drive (a second internal would be cool too) to store all my logic projects, and in another part of that drive is my huge sample library (we all know the bigger the library... eigh eigh).

The reason i keep my samples on a seperate drive? It stops a 'bottlenecking' of data, If your streaming all your audio AND your operating system / music apps (daw etc...) from the same HD, it has to work very hard to keep up. This can even result in a corrupt or permanently damaged hard drive, and nobody wants that.

This technique is commonly called using a 'scratch disk', having a separate HD for the data, one for the operating system and applications, and isnt limited by audio applications. Most pro video and other media resources use this technique to keep the systems healthy and spankingly fast.

Right, just a tip. I recently purchased this application for OSX called Audiofinder (http://www.icedaudio.com/)
Its excellent!!! really cant praise it enough, the demo works for over ten times with no time limit, it allows you to move samples and folders in bulk with fast audio previews and folder organization.
Definately worth a look! For example, i now have all my purchased sample cd's on my 'scratch disk'. i then selected all my fav kicks, setup a destination folder and hit copy. i now have my own kick list from personal favs etc...
(btw im not getting paid to do this lol)

A screen -


I know there are probably free alternatives for PC users, but im on OSX.

So yeah shoot away questions, hints and tips!!!

I need to get this done. but I know it will take forever to do and I'm too lazy. What folders have you made?

EDIT: Found the original post1699221.html?hilit=sample%20organisation#p1699221

I need to get a external hard-drive, can someone tell me this? Can I run FL Studio and VST's off of an external hard-drive?

Also I just have

Drums > Loops > [LOOPS]
> Single > Kicks
> Snare
> Perc

mine is a mess but, i like mess.

I don't use samples...

Yeh man I remember there being a sample organisation thread up before as well!

My sample library is currently an absolute state, I have 4 folders on my main hard drive jam packed with random samples (hundreds of gig worth in total) as well as ROMpler/Stock samples in their own directories all over my hard drive. It's a state. They're not even very well sorted within those 4 folders, just complete randomness.. But for some reason it does seem to work for me, the only thing I really need to sort out is drums, so that I only have hits I will use so that I can start building some sampler instruments out of them... Which is another thing that sort of bothers me again.
If I've got hundred of kick samples and a sampler only allows me to use a certain amount, I want to know how to separate my samples out on the hard drive so that it suits the sampler instruments... Eg. KICKS1, KICKS2 - Folders relating to sampler instrument. CONFUSION. It would be even more confusing if I was to make Sampler instruments as drum kits instead of separate types of kicks on different sampler instruments....

But yeh, the reason I want to do it this way is because I don't want to go through my finder every time I make a track, I'm the type who wants to get into it there and then, which unfortunately results me turning to stock drums quite often.

It is something I will be sorting out, just not sure when as of yet. I think the easiest way for me would be to make a multisample Kontakt library as opposed to using the more desirable Battery. That way I can still have loads of samples on separate midi channels in Kontakt (Kicks on midi channel 1, snares on 2, etc) and still be able to tune each sample as necessary within Kontakt.

Definitely scared regarding your bottlenecking comment. Need a firewire HDD then as I've run out of USB's. Do you save your project's onto an external HDD too?

Ouch! Yeh, I'm all over the place.

wirez wrote:
Do you save your project's onto an external HDD too?

Yeah man. And all of my 3 drives are being backed up by one monster 1.5tb. Im going to make a backup of this backup and store it at a friends house. They say your not truly backed up until you have your data in 3 separate locations, not just 3 separate drives.

Yeah this audio finder looks like the hit. Already have all samples into drums + breaks/fx/vocals/pads/bass/random but might try this out!

Depone wrote:

wirez wrote:
Do you save your project's onto an external HDD too?

Yeah man. And all of my 3 drives are being backed up by one monster 1.5tb. Im going to make a backup of this backup and store it at a friends house. They say your not truly backed up until you have your data in 3 separate locations, not just 3 separate drives.

Protecting from fire and theft

gnome wrote:

Depone wrote:

wirez wrote:
Do you save your project's onto an external HDD too?

Yeah man. And all of my 3 drives are being backed up by one monster 1.5tb. Im going to make a backup of this backup and store it at a friends house. They say your not truly backed up until you have your data in 3 separate locations, not just 3 separate drives.

Protecting from fire and theft

It all makes sense now!

Dep, I back up my own hard drive to a time capsule with time machine...
If I bought an external firewire HDD, would I be able to back this and my internal hard drive up to one single time capsule?

wirez wrote:Dep, I back up my own hard drive to a time capsule with time machine...
If I bought an external firewire HDD, would I be able to back this and my internal hard drive up to one single time capsule?

yes so long as your "time capsule" is bigger (larger the better) than all the drives you want backing up added together. It separate these backups into the relative folders in one backup folder. So you can restore different drives no problem

My sample library is pretty messy, which for me is bad, because instead of looking through for some nice gems, i just end up going to the "packs" folder and grabbing some drum hits from a sample CD library. I've always had a dilema of whether or not to keep packs whole, or jus take out what i want and put it in a seperate folder. plus if i were to re organise everything fruity would have a fucking fit whenever i tried to open an old project. serves me right for not using project folders for everything which include project files and all samples used, something i'm changing now.

I also keep all my music, samples, and projects backed up onto a 1TB drive.
My music library is kept mainly on my laptop i use for DJing, and my samples stay on my main production PC, both are then backed up onto the drive with a great program called SyncBack, discovered it on a really useful post about backing up data on lifehacker a while back, i can dig out the article if anyone's interested?

Depone wrote:

wirez wrote:Dep, I back up my own hard drive to a time capsule with time machine...
If I bought an external firewire HDD, would I be able to back this and my internal hard drive up to one single time capsule?

yes so long as your "time capsule" is bigger (larger the better) than all the drives you want backing up added together. It separate these backups into the relative folders in one backup folder. So you can restore different drives no problem

Awesome man thanks for the advice, this is something I need to get sorted as soon as I can afford the drives then!

Such good advice, sadly my stuff is just thrown all over the show out of laziness. Most of the last track I did is lying on my desktop at the minute. Need to clean it up. So badly...