# Synth backup and sync - headache



## EmmCeeSq (Jul 28, 2019)

Hi all,

I own and use two synths - Omnisphere and Zebra. I spend a lot of time (as I'm sure most of you do) creating custom patches and tweaking existing presets. This is a lot of work to lose in the event of a harddrive crash. 

I've figured out how to back up Zebra (although there's no easy way just to have Zebra store your presets in Dropbox, which must a sensible MO, surely?), but Omnisphere is giving me something of a headache. The file management is confusing and opaque, with lots of duplication. I could move the entire STEAM folder to dropbox, but this seems like ridiculous overkill just to save my user patches and imported sounds. 

Two questions then - firstly I'm grateful for suggestions on the best way to backup Omnisphere custom user data that doesn't involve massive amount of work and complex file-management. And secondly, why do developers not make this process more user-friendly? It seems as though backing up custom user data to an online repository (and keeping the storage footprint of that realtively minimal) must be a common enough feature-request?

Thanks!

Mike


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## wst3 (Jul 28, 2019)

you didn't mention what OS you are using, I use Windows, so I detail my solution and then provide hints for Mac OS X which others more knowledgeable can blast<G>!

In both you want to create "pointers" from where the developer wants you to store things to where you want to store things.

I think (it has been a while) there was a way to change some of the installation paths, but not at a sufficiently granular level, so I went with the default - "C:\VstPlugins\u-he\Zebra2.data" under which there are two sub-directories of interest, presets and userpresets. Probably didn't need to move both, but they are small so I did.

There are several tools that let you create and manage links, I use Link Shell Extension, and so far it works!

What you do is move the directory in question (e.g. C:\VstPlugins\u-he\Zebra2.data\userpreset) to DropBox, and then create a symbolic link to that directory back in the original directory.

Same applies to Omnisphere. Just a little more convoluted. The original directory is: C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Spectrasonics\STEAM\Omnisphere, which contains some directories that need to be backed up, and some that don't. In my typical lazy fashion I moved the whole thing (about 50 GB) although I really do need to revisit that choice.

The same thing applies to many developers, they "hard code" or limit the choices for locating your data. I think that's a really poor choice on their parts, but it is easily circumvented.

On the Mac these are probably unix style links, and there should be a utility or two to manage them. I'm afraid that's all I know.


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## EmmCeeSq (Jul 28, 2019)

Thank you! Sorry, I need to sort my signature out so that it's more useful. I'm also on Windows, and will check out shell extension. I'm currently manually backing up every week, but manual backup (as we all know) is definitely not the way forward.

Really appreciate the detailed answer, thank you  

Mike


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