I’ve got 2 perfect shows under my belt now with GP. After 2 shows, rehearsals and practicing/programming at home, I’m confident that GP is gonna show up. The one thing that gives me pause is my mini PC. It’s a screaming Geekom mini with intel i9, 2TB hard drive and blazing speed. It hasn’t failed me in any way,
…but what if it did? I have no backup or redundancy. I’m wondering about a cheaper mini PC with GP on it that I can load my set list to before shows…and I suppose all my VST instruments as well.
Any pointers or tips on best practice for “cloning” your main PC…just in case? How are you managing this?
I have aback up laptop in my rehearsal space (but I do not bring it to gigs. I don’t get paid enough for that).
But, unfortunately, I don’t think you can just “clone” you original computer. You have to install all the software again (remember the anti-piracy registrations. So, they keep you from just cloning the computer, I think)
One tip is make sure all the sample libraries use the same file paths as the original computer (or you could use symbolic links, but I try to keep it simple).
There are various utilities for cloning a drive.
I bought a refurbished NUC that’s identical to the new one I already had for nearly half the price.
That’s probably all you need for a backup.
Had I known better when I got started, I would have…
if you use the same Microsoft account to log in to both computers, and you have adequate cloud space, GP will keep all of its important files where they sync to the cloud. When you log in to your new computer, those files will sync to it. If you make changes to a gig file, those changes will sync between the two through the cloud drive.
I don’t know how well all of that works. If you decide to go that way, please let me know. I log into my backup computer with a different account. So, I have to manually copy all pertinent files from one computer to my server then copy them down to the backup computer. Upside is that I’m not paying for a lot of cloud space. Downside is it does consume a small amount of time.
Anyway, yes, you do have to install all software on both computers.
If you think of buying a less performant one, then be careful. Effectively, that backup system will determine the maximum load for you primary system.
Personally I would go, if possible, for the exactly the same system. Then you are sure it’s capable of doing the same things, when it comes to load, usb ports, latency, and so on. The only thing you can probably neglect is the GPU, but even that might change in the future.
That’s what I did. I got two very similar Lenovo laptops (Thinkpad P. 16, with 64 gb ram) about a year apart.
So far, so good (thx, in large part, to Frank’s fix for my throttling issue).
Actually, I am happy one is Windows 10 and the other is Windows 11 so the Windows updates are not the same. (I understand the point about not updating, but…).
I had an issue recently where Windows coughed a bit and refused to load my gigfile because it insisted on using a completely different interface driver. I had to pack up and go home. I came up with two possible solutions:
*Idea 1.
I fitted a 2 Tb SSD into my Surface Pro 9 and created three partitions, two of which were Win installs and the third was a data partition. All my gigfiles are stored on the data partition and both Win installs have access to it. The idea is that if one partition didn’t work correctly, then I could load the other and carry on. I haven’t had to do this yet.
*Idea 2.
I bought a Pianobox mini 2 USB GM sound module that doesn’t need a computer. I would simply plug it into my keyboard and play away. As before, I haven’t had to use this yet.