Its time to revisit this subject. A lot has changed since the last time we had this sort of thread. 
 
This is a thread meant to be contributed to. I want as many ideas and ways of doing things as can be posted. 
 
Best practice for setting up hardware. Although many hardware synths and controllers have USB connectors I find it very simple to use a MIDI port to hook up my hardware. A multi port can handle multiple inputs and outputs and has the nice attribute of using only one USB port. I use the CW USB MIDI interface two of them connected together giving 6 ins and 6 outs.
 
This will mean you need to have power to your hardware independent of USB. The MIDI ports I have are always connected. 
 
I have all my hardware on a single switch using a power strip for computers that is also good for audio hardware. 
 
Before I start Sonar or any other audio software that will use my hardware I turn it one with the single switch. I wait for the audio interface to connect and than and only than I load up Sonar. 
 
I have been doing this this way for a long time and have not had a problem with gear not being recognized by Sonar.
 
 
Another thing that will help is use a separate HD for your projects It can't hurt to have one for samples too.
Sonar is happy installed on Drive c: and is a small footprint. If however you put your projects on the drive C: too they could at some point be lost. I don't care if my drive C: goes down as much as some because I have my projects on another disk.
 
As a bonus  things should work more responsively due to not having to wait for disk access.
 
The above was for getting the ball rolling. I hope to hear from all of you. 
 
Please keep this on topic. The idea is to give the forum a way you do things that you think works well.  This is how you use hardware with Sonar and how you use Sonar. Work flow and tips for streamlining  the over all process of tracking, mixing and mastering if you do that. The rule of thumb is Best Practices. 
 
 
 

I have a few practices learned over time.
 
1. If possible, always connect USB interfaces and controllers directly to the PC and avoid USB hubs. If you have to use a hub be sure it's externally powered.
2. Disable all onboard sound modules. This includes PC and video cards.
3. Be sure to keep all drivers up to date.
4. Whenever Sonar starts to act up (no pun intended) I always look for non-Sonar system changes like windows update.
5. My machine is online at all times, so I do regular malware scans.
 
That's my core best practices. They have nothing directly to do with Sonar but seem to keep my system stable. A stable system is the best thing to make Sonar run well.

Nice post John thank you.

Great Idea John
I'm just building a new DAW so all is fresh for me. 
The Computer: 
I like to keep my C drives lean and mean. New build is a 128 SSD drive. 
Drive # 2 ( move from old daw) is 1TB 7200 RPM all things audio on here. 
Drive #3    500 Gig drive used for hourly/ daily  back ups.
Drive # 4 External Drive used at least weekly.
Specs are now not an issue as I would think we all have at least an i5 and lots of RAM.
Windows 8.1 was a better buy, so..goodbye W7.  
I don't need to be on line as I have lots of other computer I can use for that. 
Run the Latency monitor SAP   http://www.resplendence.com/latencymon
I found Craig's tip about the HD audio bang on, it was the worst culprit. Disable it. 
 
I see a lot of posts here with people screwing up where they keep there Sonar files. Please folks, take the time to manage your files, Don't let Sonar do this, it will put everything in one folder. 
My method has worked for years and I have not even come close to disaster or mixing up my files. 
Use Dates on containment folders which should be on a DATA drive or at least a partition drive. 
Example , my new DAW will have all my Sonar files on the DATA drive I cloned and swapped over from the old DAW. 
All I need to do is tell Sonar to open at the root of that drive in the folder preferences. 
When I click -File /Open I'm there. I then browse to the folder I'm working on. Each is Named as an Album, Band or Client and dated. 
Ex  "Bruce Baker-11-05-14"  
Inside is a folder for each song
Inside each song folder is the CWP, The Audio folder, a MIDI copy*  and other miscellaneous stuff like lyrics and any material used for the song like a MP3 file of the original, a rough demo etc. 
When I back up the whole containment folder I will re Date the Back up folder. 
At this point I have about 20 of these "albums" and most have at least 6 dated copies. Still lots of room on my drives. 
 
* Johnny's Tip of the Day- Make sure you perform a "save As" and to "MID type 1"  occasionally. This will make a    Future proof back up of what might be the most important part of each song file. I still work with my Atari files from 1985. That's 20 years gone by and they are still un changed. 
Midi don't care about Sample rates, bit rates, what plug ins , which software and so on. Over time the sounds only improve as we are given better playback devices. 
 
 

You know Johnny that last tip is an excellent one and one I don't recall ever seeing before. Save as a type 1 MIDI file. This is very important for anyone that creates MIDI or is editing it. If the CWP file goes south that MIDI file will come in very handy. 
 
Great tip.

BTW this thread isn't just for Johns. LOL

An uninterruptible power supply is one of the best investments you can make not only for data security, but component longevity. And although in the immortal words of Herman Cain "I don't have facts to back this up," I think it contributes to software stability as well. Those little micro-brownouts and spikes that happen all the time have an effect.

 In addition to the hard drive that stores a work in progress, I have three kinds of backups.
 

• A USB stick plugged into the computer. I save the day's work to that just in case the computer screws up. This is basically "scratchpad backup."
• At a point close to completion or after being completed, projects get backed up to a second hard drive.
• Optical does the archival storage. DVD-ROM for some individual projects, but after accumulating enough material that needs to be backed up, I use Blu-Ray for serious storage.

 
Through some weird law of nature, people who don't back up often need to retrieve files...but they're not there. People who have extensive backups hardly ever really need to retrieve files. It's like protection money to the mob - if you pay it, they leave you alone.

Great stuff here. Here are a few of my practices.
 
Power to a filter/spike protector then to two UPS's.
 
I keep my computer, Glyph and interface on one UPS and everything else on the other, for example, powered monitors.
 
I run a 40" main LCD without UPS support, but have another 20" that is connected to the UPS with the powered monitors. I have somewhat frequent power outages as a result of my very rural location, so better to be safe than sorry.
 
I have switches/power strips used for powered monitors for convenience and also practice the idea that all interfaces or any hardware connected to the PC should be powered up before Sonar is launched.
 
I have two internal HDs, one for the OS and one for audio. I have one Glyph 7200rpm 1TB external HD (USB3), two Lacie 500GB (USB3) external HDs (keep one offsite), and one USB2 500GB external HD by Seagate along with one 32GB and one 64GB thumb drives just to move data from the tracking Laptop to the Mixing/Mastering Desktop.
 
I also run the network cable thru my UPS...sounds good right?
 
I use Acronis and have two back ups currently available. One from original build by Jim at StudioCat and one for the upgrade to X3e. I have recently loaded some great plug ins and it might not be a bad idea to make another back up. I am not really up to speed on the terminology or complete understanding of this, but had to use it once already and it worked great for completely restoring the entire system as if I had just went for a walk and came back. Completely seamless and perfect. I guess it is a mirror image or something...sorry, if I was sitting in front of the system now I could tell you, but I am not...sorry.
 
I too, create dated folders of every project and when I open a folder everything I need is there.
 
Not anything new here, but I hope it helps.
 
 
 
 
 

johnnyV
[...] I like to keep my C drives lean and mean. New build is a 128 SSD drive. [...]

Be very diligent about deleting temporary files on that setup and ensuring caching does not go there (things like Melodyne and video editing). Video will eat space the quickest of them all. I had 40 GB of junk video caches when I began using Premiere Pro which I then defaulted to the main F:\ directory (magnetic) - this way I could easily see/find them and either move them to their proper place or delete them. Just "fiddling" with Melodyne had put 6 GB on my C drive before I caught on.
 
An interesting "maintenance" technique is actually in Windows Explorer search functionality (Win7 +), which is first search for "Gigantic" (> 128 MB) files, then "Huge" (16-128 MB) ... if the files that pop-up are data files, it is a good time to check preferences on the programs used which are creating them.