# Question about backing up sound libraries



## Gingerbread (Oct 18, 2021)

When backing up a sound library to a backup drive, should I be backing up just the original downloaded RAR files? Or the extracted files/folders? Does it matter?

What would be "best practice"?


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## Henu (Oct 18, 2021)

The safest is to back up the downloaded RARs, and depending for a developer, you can also save some space when using that method. I personally backup all those, and then also clone my sample drives on one 8TB HDD.


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## d.healey (Oct 18, 2021)

If your backup software has built in compression then the rar format might not offer an advantage. In such cases it would probably be better to backup the extracted files so that if you need to restore them you won't have to also re-extract them.


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## Gingerbread (Oct 18, 2021)

Thanks @Henu and @d.healey 

So it sounds like the advantage to saving just the RARs is (potential) space-saving, but in terms of pure functionality, either will work okay. (I haven't always been good in the past about saving the original RARs)


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