Are there any experts that have gone through the trauma of moving all their music software to a new windows PC and can advise on the best approach? I can’t find much official Steinberg instruction or comprehensive YouTube vid. I have Cubase pro 13 with GA, Halion, Absolute, GA etc expansions, Komplete 14, Spitfire LABS, Impact Soundworks VSTi’s (Kontakt) , soft synths like Vital. and Waves Element I’ll be moving from windows 10 on the old to 11 on the new PC.
I know how to export / import a cubase preferences file but conscious that contains only part of the customisations. Does it include the key commands?
I also read that there are a couple of SQL files that contain your MediaBay customisations like sample ratings and descriptions that could be copied but will those be screwed by different drive names etc on the new PC.?
What of custom templates, presets (eg. Massive, Retrologue, Vital, Element)?
I’ve found some customisations are in the Roaming and Documents folders eg1. C:\Users\MYName\AppData\Roaming\Steinberg\Cubase 13_64” folder.
eg2. C:\Users\MYName\documents\vital\user\presets
eg3 C:\Users\MYName\documents\VST3 Presets\Waves\Element Stereo
eg4 C:\Users\MYName\documents\Native Instruments\Massive\Favorites
I imagine its just fantasy to be able to just copy these whole folders trees over for Steinberg and non Steinberg software! It’s going to take an age to investigate every VSTi and decide what needs to be copied.
I’d like to move Kontakt libraries and Steinberg data content without having to re download as it’s a huge amount of data.
I’m sure there are other considerations not on my radar but any advice greatly appreciated.
This will work. When I’ve migrated to a new PC I’ve just copied the Steinberg Folder from the Appdata Folder on the old one to the new one.
Again you can just copy these over. For the Steinberg libraries after relocating Double+click on a .vstsound File. That will register all the libraries it finds in that location and any sub-folders. I don’t recall what you do for Kontakt, but it was easy enough.
Please share if moving Cubase and alikes went as planned. Maybe you could give an overview about the steps involved because this question pops up on a regular basis.
Thanks in advance!
I do this every time I migrate to a new Windows version (which is usually at the same time that I buy a new computer).
I have all my sample data on a separate SSD, which I either keep and put in the new system, or copy the data (advisable to keep the same drive letter). For most plugins, after installation, you can configure them use that path as their sample location.
I assume that you have a backup of all your personal data that you can restore to your new PC.
If not (why not?), copy the following folders to an external USB drive:
“c:\Users\YourName\Documents” (and Pictures, Videos and where else you might have saved something.
“c:\Users\YourName\AppData\Roaming”
That way, you can easily copy missing stuff from that USB drive.
Like if you use track presets, they are actually saved in %APPDATA%\Roaming\Steinberg\Track Presets, not in the “Cubase 13_64” folder…
User Presets for third party plugins are usually stored in your Documents-Folder, as you have already noticed (e.g. Komplete in the “Native Instruments” folder).
AFAIK = As Far As I Know
I usually avoid acronyms - first time I use one apart from known Steinberg acronyms and this happens…
Sorry, I better stick with avoiding them in the future…
Thanks a lot Fese. I note what you say about that additional steinberg folder Do you think though that I should also copy the whole of C:\Users\MYName\AppData\Roaming\Steinberg\Cubase 13_64” folder. Also do you know where the Kontakt interface preferences are kept? It will save time setting up midi options etc.
can anyone advise as to whether it is wise to copy whole folders like C:\Users\MYName\AppData\ Local \Steinberg\ . Some folk on youtube seem to take the approach that you wait to see if something doesn’t work as you’d like then try and track down the relevant old pc file to copy. Sounds like this would be a slow painful process.
Maybe @Johnny_Moneto can chime in - he advised to copy parts of this folder as it is relevant for the MediaBay (post is in German):
To be honest, I have never succeeded in keeping my ratings when I moved everything so I gave up evenually. I’d be happy to learn how to do so as I am about to move everything later this year. Maybe I’d start to use ratings again if there was a clear and working instruction.
That is very concerning as I’ve invested a lot of time rating and tagging samples/loops in MediaBay. I wish Steinberg gave some good advice on moving to a new PC
A lot of users have reported that they succesfully moved their ratings so it is doable. It just never worked for me, I must have done something wrong. That’s why I would be thrilled to have a detailed How To when it comes to moving everything to a new system including ratings (possibly 3rd party ratings, too, in a perfect world).
I’ve always copied the entire Appdata folder to the new PC, but not into its Appdata folder, parking it somewhere else instead. Then I use that copy as the source to copy portions into the new PC’s Appdata folder. That way I have a copy of anything I’d potentially want.
Whatever do you mean?
