Moving Content to different drive in Windows 7

Cubase
#1

I could swear there was an article or forum post about this somewhere but I’m not finding it. Clearly my Google Fu is weak.

Halion, VST Sound, Padshop and Groove Agent content all live on my C drive in the C:\Users[UserName]\AppData\Roaming\Steinberg\Content folder. It chews up close to 20 gigs and this is a small drive. I want to move it to a different location but none of my tricks are working.

  1. Using Regedit, I found the location, changed the path to point to a new folder tree for all for and started Cubase. When it didn’t work, I reverted to the original paths and started Cubase to make sure it all still worked.
  2. Following a forum post, I created shortcuts to the new locations with the exact same name as the original folders, and copied the shortcuts to the c:\users folder. When that didn’t work, I copied the content back and once again verified that Cubase still worked.

In both cases, I got error messages vstsound files weren’t found. There’s a locate button, which I used, but it still didn’t buy it. After selecting the file, I’d get a different error message for the same file, e.g. “could not create link for Drum Loop Expansion 01.vstsound.”

Perhaps there was an option when I installed but if so I missed it. Nonetheless, since many people use small SSDs for their boot drive, it seems like there should be some way of moving this content to a different location.

Does anyone know how to accomplish this?

Thanks!

#2

This concept worked fine for me. This is specifically what I did. Recommend backing everything up first.

  1. Create folder on disk where you want the content stored.
  2. Select the .vstsound files that you want to relocate and right+click drag them to new folder.
  3. When you release the right-click select the move (not copy or shortcut) option.
  4. Select those same files in the new folder & right+click drag them back to their original location.
  5. When you release the right+click select the shortcut option.

Now when Cubase looks in the old location it will find a bunch of shortcuts, each pointing to the actual content.

#3

Thanks, Roger.

I’ll give that a try. I did the same thing only with folders, not the files themselves. It hadn’t occurred to me that it would be different operating on the individual files. But then, there’s a long list of things that have never occurred to me, so that’s not terribly shocking.

#4

That did the trick.

In my mind, there should be no difference between a folder and a file shortcut, so I never even bothered after the folder approach didn’t work. Of course, the difference between theory and practice is that in theory, there’s no difference.

Thanks for setting me straight!

#5

Ultimately I got tired of having to micro-manage the disk space on my C: drive. So I cloned it onto a larger SSD. Now even though I’ve got the space, the .vstsound files are still in their new location - because lazy.

#6

What, you mean sitting in front of a computer doing mind numbing maintenance tasks isn’t your idea of fun?

Yeah, I’m with you on the lazy. Internet was down and couldn’t work for half a day, so doing local file system cleanup finally got its moment. Otherwise, if it ain’t broke…

#7

Just upgraded to 9 and was so annoyed that I couldn’t choose where to put the GBs worth of content files.

The method above worked for me perfectly (Windows 10 even)! Thank you a 1000 times. Never would have occurred to me to use shortcuts.

#8

Please have a look on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JB_coW-1hoA

#9

There is a tool that now comes with Cubase to relocate content called the Steinberg Library Manager.

Use that.

#10

Excellent. Thanks, Rodger.

#11

Manual
https://steinberg.help/library_manager/v1/en/Library_Manager_1_Steinberg_Library_Manager_en.pdf