How to back up MPC projects from the SD card to your computer

Where your MPC projects actually live

On an MPC One, Live, X or Key, every project is a folder on the SD card, the internal drive or an attached USB drive. Each project folder holds the .xpj project file and a [ProjectData] folder with the samples, sequences and program files it uses. The MPC’s browser shows them as one thing; the card sees a folder. That folder is the project — copy it whole, and you have a complete backup.

Nothing on the MPC backs this up for you. If the card dies, the project is gone unless a copy exists somewhere else.

Backing up MPC projects by hand

1. Connect the MPC to the computer. Either put the SD card in a reader, or plug the MPC in over USB and enable USB mass storage (MPC 2 / MPC 3: Menu → Preferences → USB Mass Storage, or via the Storage tab). The card and internal drive appear as drives on the computer.
2. Copy whole project folders, never just the .xpj. The [ProjectData] folder is the samples. A lone .xpj opens with everything missing.
3. Keep the same layout on the computer. Music/MPC/<card name>/<project>/. When you need to restore, you copy the folder back and it just works.
4. Bounce a mixdown on the MPC first (Export → Audio Mixdown into the project folder). The bounce is what you’ll recognise the beat by three years from now.
5. Do it every time the card leaves the studio. This is the step everyone skips, which is why manual backups fail.

The problem with manual backups

They depend on remembering. The night you make the best beat of the year is never the night you export it. And once you have a hundred project folders named Beat 07 and Untitled 12 on your computer, you’ve preserved the files and lost the music — you still can’t find the one you’re thinking of.

How MusicCat backs up MPC projects automatically

MusicCat’s desktop client (Windows, macOS, Linux) watches for drives. Plug the MPC in or insert its card, and the client recognises MPC-shaped storage the moment it mounts and asks once: always, just this time, or never for this drive. It remembers the answer per card. From then on, every time the MPC is connected, each project folder is preserved to your catalogue — no export step, no dragging folders, nothing to remember.

Every .xpj is parsed: tempo, time signature, sequence names, the drum kits each track uses, and the MPC firmware that saved it. If there is a mixdown in the project folder, MusicCat analyses it for key, energy and danceability and writes a short AI description — “90 BPM boom-bap, dusty piano loop, swung hats”. Your beats become a searchable library next to your DAW projects: filter by BPM or mood, listen to the preview, find the one.

The first time this ran on a real MPC Live, it noticed the card and started preserving 1.6 seconds after it was plugged in — 43 projects, three of which existed nowhere else.

The card stays exactly as it is; MusicCat only reads it. When the card eventually fails, the projects are already somewhere else.