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If I bought a new hd drive and used that as the boot drive and had my current HD purely just for production related stuff (by not touching anything on it); would I have to reinstall all the VSTs and such? This is the only thing I am confused about as I have never done it before but my logic tells me i'd have to?

I'm no nerd, so let others contradict, but I think some yes, some no. Some are just pure .dlls and just slot right into your daw, while others use assets that they find through the registry and other methods, so those would be broken.

Reinstalling the full setup is really scaring me about my next build. I'd like to have everything on lock first, and install just a few plugs. I'm getting pretty close, you know like a hundred plugs, but still a few up in the air.

Yeah.. Thats what I thought; registry problems and that.

Wouldn't want to have a 'production' boot-up and a 'normal' boot up but think it might be my last hope?

you could clone current drive to the new drive

but then that would just make new hd work on old computer. this would not solve if were trying to migrate it to new system

im always a fan of reinstalling everything fresh. takes a long time but i just think its good to start fresh.

This is one big problem i have with vst's - some let you move them, some throw up errors and crash your daw if you move them. The problem with the funny ones is that they link to other folders which contain libraries, interface graphics, presets etc.

Its a pain, but a fresh install is probably your best bet.

Yep, some can be moved as dll but others have registry entries.
Just do a fresh install and clone the drive.

Thing is, this drive I am running at the moment is 30gb away from being full (500gb) so would mean I'd have to buy a 1tb to make cloning beneficial, granted I would wipe things like games, films, mp3 and that so its only production stuff but my guestimate is that it'll be around 400gb in size either way.

Think I might just dual boot.

400GB ???

Just setup a separate music drive and dual boot as you`ve mentioned.
I`d still say a fresh install and then clone the clean install.
Sort of your optimum production install and then clone.

I have 2 separate tb drives but I have a primary operating system drive that I install music software.
I keep everything non essential on the tb drives.
Well as non essential as samples can be

Well, my kontakt libraries are like 100gb on their own, about 30 full movie rips (of just the sound) at around 1-2gb each.. lets call that 55gb. Samples are 80gb, then you got all the vsts and their libraries and such; another 40-50gb. Project files (with the use of lots of audio) makes them around 120mb a completed tune, I got around 50 of those.

So works at around 300gb? Haha; maybe a horde a bit?

its usually freebie vsts that tend to still work. kontakt for example would need reinstalling again.
since iv moved from different laptops and pcs a lot.. id say just copy and paste what you really need (even from your vst folder).. and then reinstall the pasted vsts that didnt work.
you wont waste any space like this if you use the same vst folder path as you did before since reinstalling would just overwrite the old .dll file

Honestly, I'd just suck it up and reinstall on a brand new HD...failing HDs are no fun and in my experience hard to diagnose until things get desperate if that HD of yours is old might be best to replace it to avoid problems down the road....besides..internal HDs are dirt cheap...get a fresh new one...and doing OS/Applications on one HD and storage on another is the way to go. If you are running windows I'd highly recommend a RAID back up system for your samples, downloads, music, project files etc.

legend4ry wrote:Well, my kontakt libraries are like 100gb on their own, about 30 full movie rips (of just the sound) at around 1-2gb each.. lets call that 55gb. Samples are 80gb, then you got all the vsts and their libraries and such; another 40-50gb. Project files (with the use of lots of audio) makes them around 120mb a completed tune, I got around 50 of those.

So works at around 300gb? Haha; maybe a horde a bit?

All of this can be stored on a backup drive is what i`m saying.

fragments wrote:Honestly, I'd just suck it up and reinstall on a brand new HD...failing HDs are no fun and in my experience hard to diagnose until things get desperate if that HD of yours is old might be best to replace it to avoid problems down the road....besides..internal HDs are dirt cheap...get a fresh new one...and doing OS/Applications on one HD and storage on another is the way to go. If you are running windows I'd highly recommend a RAID back up system for your samples, downloads, music, project files etc.

Yeah, I know about computers; been building em for years and know how to maintain - I just haven't done a full install on this actual drive in years.

I have everything backed up and what not; external and 2nd storage - I just wondered about registry problems and a way to cut down 3-4 days till I am fully set back up (loadssssssss of installing isn't fun).

Reinstall and then ghost your ideal setup.
It will reward you later when you have this issue.

legend4ry wrote:

fragments wrote:Honestly, I'd just suck it up and reinstall on a brand new HD...failing HDs are no fun and in my experience hard to diagnose until things get desperate if that HD of yours is old might be best to replace it to avoid problems down the road....besides..internal HDs are dirt cheap...get a fresh new one...and doing OS/Applications on one HD and storage on another is the way to go. If you are running windows I'd highly recommend a RAID back up system for your samples, downloads, music, project files etc.

Yeah, I know about computers; been building em for years and know how to maintain - I just haven't done a full install on this actual drive in years.

I have everything backed up and what not; external and 2nd storage - I just wondered about registry problems and a way to cut down 3-4 days till I am fully set back up (loadssssssss of installing isn't fun).

Cool man. Yea...I've no idea...I usually only know enough to be dangerous.

Start fresh. Instal your necessities. And then do rolling installs when you reach for something and it is not there. Hopefully this way, you'll end up installing only that which you use. I know I have so much detritus. Thing is, you know once a year you're going to reach for a particular Jack Dark plug...

but theres nothing more rewarding then a quick fix to computer problem...clone the whole drive. once you get it in just uninstall all games from one.

Dunno what plugins you have, but a lot of plugins will not only need to be reinstalled, but you might also need to get a new license for your new computer. A lot of them use specific hardware IDs as a form of copy protection, so the same key won't work on a new computer. That doesn't mean buying it again, just going through registering it with the company on a new system. Some software has serials tied to only that hardware ID and won't work if you get a new computer or try to install it elsewhere.

It's never recommended to just switch out a system drive into a new computer unless the hardware and OS are the same (maybe just different RAM/video card at most). It will cause lots of problems down the line. Using it as a secondary/slave drive is fine though.