Safe to delete bakcup folder?

[Christian_R]

Hi,

This is probably a stupid question, but I just need to be sure

Is it safe to delete the files in the backup folder? Some of my project have very many backup files, which take up a lot of space.

[Angstrom]

Yep. Sometimes, when I am having a very slow day with no creative drive I go through and prune all my backups,
.

Because I save my songs in this format

New song 001.als, then if I make a change I increase the numeric index
New song 002als, New song 003.als ... etc.

For each of those .als files Live will keep three back ups. So if my song eventually gets to become. "New song (bass mix) 027.als" I will have 27 x 3 = 81 backups in the backup folder.

Now that's not a huge problem in itself but if in New song 008. als to New song 015.als I recorded a bung of massive vocal takes, or synth jams , and then in the version 016 I removed these takes from the song. ... the waves will remain in the project because they are referenced in the backups.

So, if you are tidying up projects like this, what you must do is delete any old song versions, delete the backup .als files, then open the most recent .als and "manage project" to find unused waves, then delete them !!

As I said, it is usually a very slow day when I do any of this , but it will reclaim several hundred gigabytes.

The simpler quicker way, of course is to "collect all and save" to a new location, then open the new project and freeze any software instruments. That way its more reliably archived. Then ... delete your old project folder from your computer (keepit archived though)

[Tarekith]

Yep, perfectly safe as long as you're sure you won’t need to go back to them for any reason. Personally I use the collect all and save method like Angstrom mentioned just to be safe, but you can just delete the folders too.