How to move your HALion content.

Virtual instruments
#1

Recently wondered why I had no room left on my SSD C drive, Well its cause I went and bought HALion (which I must say I’m immensely pleased with) However, do they let you choose a location for your content no they just dump it on the C drive. Anyhow whinge over here’s how to fix it.

Identify a location you would prefer your content on, then browse to C:\Users\YOUR USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Steinberg\Content\VST Sound (its where most of it was on my system anyway and BTW this is also Cubase’s content files as well)
Select all the content files, and copy them to your chosen location.
Next in your chosen location select all the files again and right click and create shortcuts.
sort the files by type then select all the shortcuts, this time cut them and paste them into the folder on your C drive where you got them from in the first place.
Then in this folder again sort by type then delete all the original content.
Hey presto you have just reclaimed a wodge of valuable SSD space and Cubase and HALion should not even notice the difference.
One more thing beware of updates as occasionally they may change one of the .vstsound files, would recommend you check for changes after any installs, suspect Steiny probably wouldn’t recommend this as they think we are stupid… Otherwise great product guys :smiley:

Hope it helps… :slight_smile:

#2

peachy, I’m 99.9% certain that there is the option, when installing, to select where you want your content to reside.

#3

In windows you can make symlinks that will solve the update problem. Just move the directory with the content where you want it to live, then create a symlink where it was originally installed pointing at the new location. Your programs will see the symlink directory as if it was the regular directory and updates will flow through to wherever you moved them.

#4

Thanks guys,
KevetS I’m pretty sure it asked me if I wanted to install for all users or just myself either way it dumps on the C drive. But then again I haven got a full install of 5 I have a upgrade from 4 so may be…

As for JMCecil, well first I thought stunning call why didn’t I think of that. Anyway I tried it, first problem.
You cannot create a linked folder to one that exists, this through me a little and to be quite frank, I was a little incautious and managed delete some of my sound files, dhu.

Ok no matter I will simply reinstall, here’s where it got really interesting. I created my linked folder so my C drive folder now pointed to my E drive and reinstalled Cubase first, using the new 7.05 ISO this went without a hitch. Upgraded to 7.06 still no problems. Next I started to install Halion 4. Bad move, the Halion 4 installer takes one look at the linked folder goes what the hell is that and over writes it with a real folder and I’m back to square one.

Ok, interesting I think, along with some other words, so once the installer had finished I carefully copied the files into the alternative folder, deleted the C drive ones, then recreated my symlink, next I install the Halion 5 upgrade and no problems.

I can only conclude that older installers don’t get symlinks, your solution is elegant, but unfortunately Windows is not :wink: while I may continue to use it myself (and thank you for the idea) I would warn people out there that messing with Steinberg’s defaults can be tricky business. Perhaps when Steinberg release a downloadable ISO for HALion 5 these things may be a bit more plain sailing but beware is you have any older content installers.

BTW Triebwerk does the same…

#5

I have mine set up with the symlink. You have to move the entire folder tree so that when you link the only folder with that name is the symlink folder. It works perfect here. I think you needed to move one folder down. and put the symlink there with the name of the folder you moved.

#6

Yeh all working now, just need to avoid the Dark Planet and Hypnotic Dance demos… :laughing: