Uploaded SSD to DropBox, Will that slow Cubase down or cause other problems?

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Uploaded SSD to DropBox, Will that slow Cubase down or cause other problems?

Post by alexis »

Hi - Can someone help me understand what I've done please :crazy: W10, C12 Pro here.

I had all my Cubase projects in a local E: drive SSD. I then uploaded (dragged and dropped) my E:/ drive to DropBox (1 TB of info - Cubase Projects, and a load of other stuff like Sample Tank samples, etc.).

Now my local Windows File Explorer folder structure is changed - in E:/ drive there is now a new highest level folder ,called "Dropbox", and I can view the other files and folders (including those with Cubase projects) if I double click on that Dropbox folder. And if I want to open a Cubase project called greatsong, I just point Cubase to that E://DropBox/Cubase Project greatsong/greatsong.cpr file.

Thanks for following - here's my question: Am I accessing my Cubase project greatsong from the Drop Box cloud, or my local E:/ drive?

And if it did happen to be accessed from the cloud -would that be a bad thing?

I think I'm accessing the project from the local E:/ drive, because in my W10 File Explorer the .cpr file has a solid green circle with a white check mark, which someone on line said meant it was both local and online.

Would anyone have any insight into where I'm actually accessing my .cpr file from now that I've done that drag'n'drop of the entire E:/Drive to DropBox?

Thank you!
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Re: Uploaded SSD to DropBox, Will that slow Cubase down or cause other problems?

Post by Eddy Deegan »

alexis wrote: Sun Mar 10, 2024 2:19 am I had all my Cubase projects in a local E: drive SSD. I then uploaded (dragged and dropped) my E:/ drive to DropBox (1 TB of info - Cubase Projects, and a load of other stuff like Sample Tank samples, etc.).

Now my local Windows File Explorer folder structure is changed - in E:/ drive there is now a new highest level folder ,called "Dropbox", and I can view the other files and folders (including those with Cubase projects) if I double click on that Dropbox folder.

I don't use Dropbox but from your description it appears to me as if you've simply moved all the content that was in the root of your E: drive into a folder called 'DropBox' on the E: drive.

If you log into DropBox using your browser, do you see all the content in there? A terabyte of data takes a long time to upload even with a fast internet connection (at least it does at the time of writing!). I'm pretty sure if you log into your Dropbox account you should be able to see some statistics pertaining to the amount of storage you're using as well.

If you don't see it online then you've not uploaded the data to DropBox, you've just moved it around on the E: drive.
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Re: Uploaded SSD to DropBox, Will that slow Cubase down or cause other problems?

Post by alexis »

Hi Eddy!

Yes indeed, it took forever to upload a TB! I do indeed have all the files and folders in Drop Box, and in my local file structure under E:/DropBox.

I can point Cubase to a specific project file in E:/DropBox and play it.

I'm just wondering 1) How to be sure whether I'm accessing the project file from my local drive vs. the Drop Box cloud, and 2) Whether there would be a performance difference either way?

Thanks for helping out! 🎹
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Re: Uploaded SSD to DropBox, Will that slow Cubase down or cause other problems?

Post by muzines »

You are loading them from the drive. A copy of the contents of the Dropbox folder is in the cloud, and any changes you make to your projects wil also be synced to the cloud.
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Re: Uploaded SSD to DropBox, Will that slow Cubase down or cause other problems?

Post by ajay_m »

When you set up a file this way, at least for OneDrive, and I expect Dropbox works the same way, an NTFS reparse point is created against that file and when the file is accessed, this triggers a check to see if it's locally present or needs to be pulled down from the cloud. Normally then the local copy is used but every file open does involve some reparse point processing so putting thousands of sample files, say, in Dropbox might incur a performance issue locally when they are opened, even if they are locally synced
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Re: Uploaded SSD to DropBox, Will that slow Cubase down or cause other problems?

Post by Wonks »

And any autosave of the project will have Dropbox noticing the new file and uploading that to the cloud in the background. This could be happening every 5 or 10 minutes (or mire often) depending on your settings.

Worth running LatencyMon, dragging a file into dropbox and seeing if doing that has a hit on the latency figures whilst it’s syncing.
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Re: Uploaded SSD to DropBox, Will that slow Cubase down or cause other problems?

Post by The Elf »

Rather than work directly in the DropBox folder I would consider running a SyncBack Free profile after a session to copy from my working folder to the one that will sync. The drawback is that this will double the local drive space it takes up.

You could instead shut the DropBox sync process down while you're working, then start it back up to sync later. With a bit of ingenuity you can probably create a batch file or something to handle this.
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Re: Uploaded SSD to DropBox, Will that slow Cubase down or cause other problems?

Post by alexis »

Thank you muzines, ajay_m, Wonks, and The Elf!

I'll start out by disabling the Sync with Drop Box. I'll check LatencyMon after I finish up this file maintenance/sync/backup rabbit hole :crazy::D I mean series of activities I'm doing now.

Much appreciated!
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Re: Uploaded SSD to DropBox, Will that slow Cubase down or cause other problems?

Post by alexis »

Some computer weirdness lately that I'm attributing to whatever it was that changed the file structure so that my entire local E:/ Drive content is now nested in Dropbox ...

My Wave plugins were gone when I opened a project recently. I spoke with Waves tech support who remoted in to my ADK tower, pointed to a computer ID #, and said the Wave plugins were all on "that other" computer. Sounds plausible, but after checking we determined I didn't actually --have-- a computer with that ID #!

The story I'm running with now is that Drop Box not only changed my file structure as I mentioned above, but also somehow renamed my computer (gave it a new ID #) ... and I'm sticking to that story for no good reason except it's easy to do so, and makes it easy to avoid my considering whether any of all this is my fault!

Parenthetically, it is somewhat (and embarrassingly) satisfying to, without much/any hard justification for doing so, blame my bad experience on something/someone else (Drop Box, in this case)!

Perhaps if I can get past the ill at ease aspect of that I might be considered good social influencer material? Or maybe at least be thought of as someone suitable to run for office (where of course I'd monetize riling up thousands or more of easily influenced citizens against someone or something or other, or just plain each other! Yeah, baby!

PS: I have "Pause Sync" on as a default with Drop Box so no problem I can see with interrupts or resource hogging.
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Re: Uploaded SSD to DropBox, Will that slow Cubase down or cause other problems?

Post by James Perrett »

If Dropbox is anything like Google Drive, your files are now living on the cloud and have to be downloaded each time you want to use them. This isn't a good idea for audio work.
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Re: Uploaded SSD to DropBox, Will that slow Cubase down or cause other problems?

Post by alexis »

James Perrett wrote: Sun Mar 24, 2024 10:20 am If Dropbox is anything like Google Drive, your files are now living on the cloud and have to be downloaded each time you want to use them. This isn't a good idea for audio work.

Thank you, James!

Your kind reply prompted me to check my Windows File Explorer. I know my files live in the cloud, but I wanted to see whether they also lived locally on my local E drive.

The results are in the pic below (Drop Box link, ironically!). Windows Explorer seems to show the E Hard Drive still seems to be physically half full (which it was before I backed it up to Drop Box), but all the project files (except two folders) are nested in a "Drop Box" folder.

I'm still not exactly sure what is going on ... when Cubase accesses files and folders previously kept on the local E drive ... I don't exactly know whether it is accessing them from the cloud, or the local physical drive :?:

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/3zg3zqtx ... wwweu&dl=0
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Re: Uploaded SSD to DropBox, Will that slow Cubase down or cause other problems?

Post by The Elf »

James Perrett wrote: Sun Mar 24, 2024 10:20 am If Dropbox is anything like Google Drive, your files are now living on the cloud and have to be downloaded each time you want to use them. This isn't a good idea for audio work.

AFAIK DropBox by default keeps files local.
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Re: Uploaded SSD to DropBox, Will that slow Cubase down or cause other problems?

Post by RichardT »

alexis wrote: Sun Mar 24, 2024 12:10 pm
James Perrett wrote: Sun Mar 24, 2024 10:20 am If Dropbox is anything like Google Drive, your files are now living on the cloud and have to be downloaded each time you want to use them. This isn't a good idea for audio work.

Thank you, James!

Your kind reply prompted me to check my Windows File Explorer. I know my files live in the cloud, but I wanted to see whether they also lived locally on my local E drive.

The results are in the pic below (Drop Box link, ironically!). Windows Explorer seems to show the E Hard Drive still seems to be physically half full (which it was before I backed it up to Drop Box), but all the project files (except two folders) are nested in a "Drop Box" folder.

I'm still not exactly sure what is going on ... when Cubase accesses files and folders previously kept on the local E drive ... I don't exactly know whether it is accessing them from the cloud, or the local physical drive :?:

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/3zg3zqtx ... wwweu&dl=0

Turn off wifi and see if you can access them!
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Re: Uploaded SSD to DropBox, Will that slow Cubase down or cause other problems?

Post by sonics »

To the OP. Why are you doing this? Your audio files should all be local. Make your backups to a local drive, too. It makes no sense to use cloud storage unless you are sharing project files.
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Re: Uploaded SSD to DropBox, Will that slow Cubase down or cause other problems?

Post by RichardT »

sonics wrote: Sun Mar 24, 2024 5:17 pm To the OP. Why are you doing this? Your audio files should all be local. Make your backups to a local drive, too. It makes no sense to use cloud storage unless you are sharing project files.

I think there can be a use case for cloud storage. I use it for real-time offsite backup.

But all my files are indeed local.
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Re: Uploaded SSD to DropBox, Will that slow Cubase down or cause other problems?

Post by alexis »

RichardT wrote: Sun Mar 24, 2024 5:16 pm ...
Turn off wifi and see if you can access them!

Thanks, RichardT, great suggestion! I did and I can. But it was suggested Cubase might be accessing the files from cloud storage instead of locally. I'd like to know if that's the case ... and put a stop to it somehow if so.

sonics wrote: Sun Mar 24, 2024 5:17 pm To the OP. Why are you doing this? Your audio files should all be local. Make your backups to a local drive, too. It makes no sense to use cloud storage unless you are sharing project files.

All my audio files are indeed local, and I have a local external drive as a backup. I also wanted a cloud backup, you know, in case a tornado or flood wiped out the house and all my local back ups with it ( :roll: , yes, I'm a little over the top sometimes)
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Re: Uploaded SSD to DropBox, Will that slow Cubase down or cause other problems?

Post by sonics »

alexis wrote: Sun Mar 24, 2024 6:52 pm I also wanted a cloud backup, you know, in case a tornado or flood wiped out the house and all my local back ups with it ( :roll: , yes, I'm a little over the top sometimes)

Understood! :D
I prefer a second local drive stored elsewhere, or a NAS in another part of the building myself. I just find it more manageable than cloud storage. There is just too much data to move around, since I'm dealing with video as well a lot of the time.
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