Setup and Close a project - file management questions

First feature edited on Davinci

I set up a project to have the the film cache files , Database backup, and Project files saved to a folder on my desktop. It is a feature film and has a lot of data. I have to clear some files off of my hard drive to continue working but I am sure to run out of space eventually.

What are my options?

If I move my project folder to an external drive how do I tell davinci that the files have moved?

My cached clip folder is the one that is growing. Can I save those files to my external drive where I am storing the media? If so, How?

Lastly, How do I finish a project? Meaning what do I do with the project folder that has my cache files, database backups, and project files? Do I move them onto the media drives and archive? What is your best practice?

If I were you, I'd get a lot more drives. A LOT more drives.

It's always possible to Media Manage to carve up only a section of the files you're currently using, but it seems to be when editing, you want access to the full range of files, from the first day to the last. You can always clear the Cache file if it's causing any problems.

We try to use a separate SSD drive for both Cache and Gallery Stills. Every so often, I'll go through it and just delete stuff that's more than six months old, knowing chances are almost nil that I'll be revisiting those projects. If I did, I could just regenerate the Cache files and the Stills in a few minutes.

At some point, you have to come up with a workflow strategy to get you through the entire project: dailies, the offline edit, the final edit, the final mix, and the final color & finishing. Cache files are the least of the problems here. Chapter 6 of the 16.2 manual, "Improving Performance, Proxies, and the Render Cache," goes into a lot of potential performance issues in great detail, starting on p. 198. Note that Resolve 17 has a new Proxy option that may be better for your specific circumstance: a portable set of lower-res files you can use for editing decisions, usable on an external drive attached to any computer (even multiple computers), and then at the very end you re-link the project back to the original camera files for final color & finishing.

What drive do you store your project and backup files while in progress?
If internal, do you move them when you are archiving that project? if so, where?

i (like Marc) grade & finish films, but do not edit them
typicaly the complete rushes arrive on a 48Tb array, so that is what editorial had also used as their source to make their proxies
i then media manage the cam orig to a NAS, typicaly end up with somewhere in the region of 4-6Tb of cam orig media that connects via 10g to a workstation
i have a mirrored drive set inside each workstation for holding metadata like project archives, DRP's and software installers
these mirrored drives are swept everynight and copied onto an offsite backup server
at the end of a project i archive with stills and luts, make a XML of the timeline and add an installer for the software used, that stays on the offsite backup
i clean out the local "metadata" drive set every year, clear off caches and media managed cam orig when the show passes QC
hand back the array with cam orig to production, usualy with their shinny new masters also on it
a while ago i had agreed to sign a lab access letter for some films, so those i have to keep the cam orig used in the show alive for seven years, i'm nearly clear of the last one, i've not done that anymore, and won't be in the future

I recommend a five internal drive setup as a starting point for good organization and speed.

System (nothing project related)
Databases
Exports
Media
Gallery/Cache/Optimized Media/Proxies

Please forgive my ignorance - I am a creative editor trying to understand data management.

What do you mean by five internal drive setup? Do you partition your internal drive?

I am working on a laptop at thee moment.

Again I apologize - I am at a very elementary understanding of how this all works. I used to be able to afford a post-production supervisor who would help me with this aspect of post-production.

What do you mean by five internal drive setup? Do you partition your internal drive?

No, no. Never partition a hard drive. Five individual drives installed into the computer case.

As that's not possible on a Laptop, the inevitable conclusion is...you can't do this job on a Laptop.

Or rather, a Laptop is not the proper tool for this job, any more than a wrench is the proper tool for pounding in a nail.

The proper tools here are hammers and desktops.

Why some persistently recommend 5 drives to all comers, without respect to what they're doing, I'll never understand....

That said, to try to answer your questions:

-- if by "project files" you mean media files, you need to do the tedious necessary work of reading the portion of the manual which covers file relinking options and finding missing files (in your case, for moved files), and identify which approach is going to work best for your circumstances. Then you might want to do a trial run.

-- if you move a cache file folder, you're sure to lose the file links. The system will regenerate new cache files when an opened project can't find the originals. (The default location is set in preferences).

-- databases can be disconnected and reconnected, so moving a database shouldn't be a problem (with the proviso that putting a database on an external drive is asking for trouble). Again you'll need to refer to the manual.

-- when you're ready to archive a finished project there is, believe it or not, a function called "archive project". Where can you find more information about that? Why, the manual....