Cleaning up my hard drive - any tips

Cubase
1

I am using Cubase 10.5 pro, Ableton Live with Komplete Kontrol s61 mk2 plus various addons eg Omnisphere etc
I use windows 10 and have a 500gb SSD partitioned into C and D drives and a 2 terrabyte hard drive. The C drive is getting full so it would make sense to re-partition the SSD to a single partition and just use the hard drive for project files. I currently have windows and applications on the C drive with VSTs and project files all over the place

I have been using Cubase for years and have quite a few previous versions installed. There are also quite a few old 32bit VSTs as well as some that were pirate versions and stopped working - so everything is now legal and downloadable again if required. Here are some questions that spring to mind:-

I use Cubase 10.5 pro but my older projects would use 32 bit VSTs - so do I need to keep an older Cubase version and if so which one - considering they were probably made for Windows 8 or maybe earlier and I am using Windows 10.
Would it make sense to put all 64 bit VSTs into one main folder and all 32Bits into another
How much agro am I going to have regarding file associations for projects - will the associated wav files etc all need to be re-associated with the project.
Should I just move the VSTs to my hard drive and then move them back to the SSD or do a complete re-install (I have 100mb fibre to the home but its still going to take a while)
Any tips will be appreciated

2

do a disc cleaning in windows first

3

Maybe do a backup first

4

Get jbridge - it will load your 32 bit VST’s in a 64 environment. Works great :slight_smile:
You can delete older versions of CB, but keep 8.5 if you need to replace audio in video.
Mads

5

Jbridge sounds very interesting

6

I also have 8.5 -32bit installed. (for compatibility with older projects) and 10.5 (64). 8.5 is the last 32bit version. This works fine. Jbridge in 10.5 is not without problems, some plugins are unstable, while they work fine in 8.5-32.

I find myself working more in 8.5-32. Lower cpu load, can still use plugins I like. Memory-intensive processes (like drumediting, tempodetection) seem to run better in 10.5.

I like the interface of 8.5 better also.

And about “clearing” your drive: removing older versions of cubase will not give you a lot of extra empty diskspace. If you have projects on your c drive, be shure all the media (audio) is included in the project folder. Or use the backup fuction to move the project.

7

I found out, that if I don’t launch CB as an administrator, some plugins lose their GUI.

8

Madsv. Many of my plugins when displayed in the media bay, specially Native Instruments are all mono. Will try running as admin