To answer your exact question, I would say "no"... but someone else may jump in with a better answer. Personally, I would not approach a backup in that manner.

Unless the MAC is very different from the PC, Studio One does a great job of organizing all data within each songs individual folder. The only time this really changes is if you have imported external Audio, and did not choose to "copy it" to your song folder.

When I am done a song (or a project of songs) I back their folder up to two external hard drives for safe keeping, then clear them off my computer. If I ever need that song again, I can always copy it back to the local Studio One "song" folder when needed.

I do believe - if your Studio One main "Songs" folder is on your Mac internal drive? - you can just move it, cut and paste the whole folder, to an external drive. When you want to open one of those songs later, do it from the browser or the file system.

The worst that will happen is that it will break any current Start Page links to those songs and you might have to locate where some of the files are later when you open those songs initially, if the paths being written to the xml song file are literal. Not sure about the latter.

If you are ocd like myself, you will want a procedure to make sure that you have everything together. Its simple:

Capture files: Just move each session folder to the new drive. Capture session are self contained with no external files.

Studio One songs: Open each song. I can't remember which menu item its under (top menus), but the 2 commands you are looking for are "Remove Unused Files" and "Copy External Files". That will make sure files not used are not taking up room, and that any associated file for that song is copied to the media folder for that song. At that point you can fire off "File\Save to New Folder", and it will move each song in its entirety to the new loacation. Then you can delete the previous song files from the MAC HDD.

What Matt says above Is the correct way for good housekeeping.

My previous advice was the lazy man's ... "I won't be opening any of these old songs anytime soon and I just need to quickly clear some drive space." ... because opening and re-saving 30-40 songs to new folders will take a little while.

But I agree with Matt. It's not really OCD to do what he said, it's more just good housekeeping.

Thanks everyone, It's my own ocd that lead to me to ask. I will try the 'open each song' method (starting with something I don't care if I lose) and report back.

Something is hinky, I'm following the ocd method above as follows:

I opened S1 on my Mac, opened an old song file, went to 'Song' (top menu) and found 'Remove Unused Files', a window appeared with several unused files, I hit the delete all files button, went back to 'Song' and found "Copy External Files" and copied to my external hard drive location. Everything seemed fine si I closed the song file and went back to Studio One home screen.

On S1 home menu I now have the song from above listed twice, one with the files in the Mac location and another with the files in the external hard drive location. The song in the Mac location opens fine...but when I try to open the same song with files in the external hard drive location, Studio one shuts down unexpectedly? I reopened S1 and tried again and it shut down again. I then went to my external hard drive and found the song I just saved and opened the song file from there...Studio one starts to open but it shuts down again when loading the song files.

I was hoping the song in the external hard drive location would open so I could delete the song in the Mac location...but it keeps shutting down? The song will open fine from the Mac location. Any suggestions?

When you say you copied external files, did you also after that use the file\save to new folder? Delete what you previously moved, and try the save to new folder again. Something may have corrupted in the .song file in your process.

Okay, I deleted the file I saved earlier on the external hard drive and started over. This time being sure to file\save to new folder (in external hard drive) as the last step. This time it worked fine. I was able to open the song from my external hard drive. I deleted all files from the Mac. Go to go.

Not only does this process move the song files from Mac to External HD thus saving storage space on the Mac, it also gets rid of unused audio files.

Thanks all.

I used this process again on another old song and it worked fine. I could not believe how many audio files were in the trash from deleting one song off the Mac totaling = 3gb of new space.

Thanks again...

Behind the scenes, you can set a global preference to have S1 ask to copy external files on close. This becomes important if you drag files into a song, or use loops or audio not recorded in S1 or capture. When you do that, it will only reference the file where you dragged it from. Then when you move the song, that file will not move with the rest. The delete unused is needed due to S1 's non desteuctive editing. The files will always be there, and trust me thats a good thing for me, but if you know you are done with the file, that will delete the file and any reference to it.