Installing plugins onto external drives?

dav nagle

Why when I want to install plugins am I forced to install them onto my mac OS system drive? Why can't I install them onto any of my external drives? Whats this you can only install on your operating systems drive business is all about? I have no space left on my OS drive and a terrabyte on external drives. Anyone??????????

woodsdenis

dav nagle wrote: »

Why when I want to install plugins am I forced to install them onto my mac OS system drive? Why can't I install them onto any of my external drives? Whats this you can only install on your operating systems drive business is all about? I have no space left on my OS drive and a terrabyte on external drives. Anyone??????????

What plugs dav ? Most plugs with sample content can use ext drives for that.
Plugins need to be in the correct place for the DAW to see them. Therefore all Au are in Library/components folder etc. You maybe able to make an alias of this and store it elsewhere, I don't know.

studiorat

What Dennis said.

You'd be better off getting a new drive, then using Carbon Copy Cloner make a copy of the system drive. Then replace the old system drive with the new cloned one and add the new plugs. Simples...

slavedave

Just did a hard disk upgrade for my windows laptop for the same reason - diminishing space on the hard drive. The old drive was partitioned into an XP partition (for DAW purposes), a samples partition (for all the raw sample data for as many vsti's that would allow me to move/store data on it, and a vista partition for routine use.
Using Acronis True Image Home 2011, I was able to clone the old 200Gb drive to the new (USB connected) 500Gb drive in a couple of hours. Plugged the new drive into the laptop, rebooted and..... up and running again. With more space on the sample partition, I have tried to move samples from existing vst libraries on the XP Daw partition to it. It was hit and miss regarding which ones allowed me to do so AND maintain function (Addictive drums didn't play ball at first, for example ). Some plug ins allow me to re-direct the source directory post migration of samples to the sample partition (Kontakt 4, Samplemodelling's instruments for example). In the menu's of these vsti's they allow you to make the source directory changes but I am sure that you would have checked that already.
One downside of the disk change was that some vsti's needed re-authorisation since the new hard disk was interpreted as sufficiently different from the original hardware set up to constitute a "new" system and hence, a seperate authorisation. If you need your vsti's immediately then bear this potential delay in mind if you upgrade.
For the record, I have upgraded Vista to Windows 7 Ultimate and it is very happy with audio - so much so that I have started building a DAW on that partition too to see what mileage I can get from it.
All the best with your quest to rationalise your sample libraries.

dav nagle

Thanks ya'all I got it sorted!