Unless I’m the only one going through this then it has become a serious matter. First off there’s only one screen that gives you any installation path options (screenshot 1).
I use True Image to make an image file stored to another drive. In case of emergency I can use True Image to recover that backup (in this case Oct. 27, 2018). This way I can install Cubase 10, take screenshots from that installation, and use True Image to re-write my system drive bit for bit back to that date and make another attempt to do a fresh install of Cubase 10.
On my first attempt I let the two installation paths default to my system drive (C:). In this second screenshot you can see the two installation paths and also the required disk space of 757.84 MB, less than 1 GB. Directly below it are two shots of the C: drive properties, before and after. What’s supposed to be less than 1 GB is actually 12 GB! It looks like pretty much all of the audio content is now added to the system drive. It’s basically a no-brainer, put streaming and sample library content to a secondary drive, never on your system drive.
So, I recovered my True Image back up from Oct. 27, 2018 and made my second attempt. This time I installed from my secondary drive and in the 3rd screenshot it shows D:\Cubase 10. So, I took the system drive properties before and after screenshots and the results are nearly the same. One GB less, but still a significant increase on my system drive of 11 GB. My D: drive folder increased by around 7 GB but with all of this documenting I missed that screenshot.
So, if anybody reads this and haven’t yet installed Cubase 10 make sure you check the used space on your system drive. Many people (including myself) are now using Solid State system drives, and the recommendation is to allow one third of unused space. If you keep adding to what’s there you will eventually see it in poor performance as the drive starts to fill up. For me for the time being I reinstalled my Oct. 27, 2018 image drive and I’m sticking with Cubase 9.5 Pro. The only thing on the plus side here is even though my eLicenser swapped my Cubase 9.5 license for Cubase 10 both my Cubase 9.5 and 9.0 still work.
(Note: At DropBox you can view or download the shots. If you view them they show up small but there is a ‘full screen’ button.)
This was a lengthy experiment. Before I created this topic I posted an earlier one looking for any suggestions. I just checked and saw some new postings with suggestions, one in particular, from a forum member ‘Funkybot’. It involves something called Symbolic Links (Sym Links) in Windows. I just read it and it sounds like a perfect solution. Here’s what he said:
Look into Symbolic Links (Sym Links) in Windows. It totally solved this for me. The process was this:
Exit Cubase
In Windows, create a new VST Sound folder on a different drive. This is going to be the drive and folder location where you’ll want to actually store the content. In my case, I created a “Cubase Content” folder on another drive so it was: D:\Cubase Content\VST Sound
Go to C:\ProgramData\Steinberg\Content\VST Sound - cut or copy all the loop data in the folder and subfolders
Paste the data into (modify to fit whatever location you want to use) D:\Cubase Content\VST Sound - now you’ve got a copy of your VST Sound folder on the drive you want all this stuff on
Go back and delete the original VST Sound sub-folder: C:\Program Data\Steinberg\Content\VST Sound (this step is important and tripped me up last night - the OS needs to create the linked “VST Sound” folder)
Open a Command Prompt in Windows - Run as Admin or you’ll get an insufficient privileges error
In the Command Prompt type in the following (obviously, you’ll replace D:\Cubase Content\VST Sound folder with whatever one you created):
Press enter to execute - you should get a message that a Symbolic Link was created between the two folders.
If you get an error, it’s likely that you either didn’t delete the original VST Sound sub-folder, have a typo in the directory names somewhere, left out the quotes in the mklink syntax, or didn’t run the command prompt as admin. I made all these mistakes last night so you don’t have to!
Relaunch Cubase (should be no different than any other launch)
Result: 12GB of space on C: drive freed up. My Cubase content now physically resides on my D:\ drive, but Cubase still thinks it’s installed in C:\ProgramData\Steinberg\Content\VST Sound.
Right now I have my PC set back to my clone from Oct. 27, 2018, before installing Cubase 10. I went to the folder he suggested and found in it about 12 GB of content. If this works not only will it keep the Cubase 10 content off my system drive but it’ll also relieve the other 12 GB. If you want to check out that post here’s the link:
Updated from 9.5 to 10 last week, and it was not so easy to install as the previous versions. at least for me.
I was a little confused with the new “VST Sound” folder it created and deleted it. I thought it was only for installing purposes. After launching C10 the first time, I got error messages and suddenly I knew what it was for )
So Cubase 10 has now an “external VST Sound folder”… ok
Also the download procedure was a little bit strange.
My system SSD is 3/4 full, and the new steinberg-download manager refuses to download the 20GB to other drives than C.
I think Steinberg messed up the installation process instead of making it easier
