Removing sets to save for later / Unlicensed v5 work on v4?

Hello all,

I'm still in the process of getting ready to upgrade from v4 to v5 and I think I already know the answer to the second part of my heading here, but I'll ask to be sure. I am interested in taking up Lavender Audio's offer to download and try the Hereford 23 stop which we can now freely download. This, now a v5 set does not require an iLOK licence activation, so the question is, will it work / load on v4 just to try it out, or will I need to upgrade to v5 to try it out?

The second question pertains to the first part of my heading. I have a number of sets installed that did not require licensing in v4, and a few others that did. Regardless, some of these sets I rarely if ever use, they're taking up space on my hard drive and I'm nearing my 1 TB capacity and would like to free up space for other sets I'm looking at. So, I'm looking at uninstalling these rarely used sets vs. migrating them to v5, but what I'd like to do is save them to a thumb drive so I have them, and if I choose can re-install them later when I switch over to v5 assuming I have the room on my hard drive.

Could anyone here give me the basic rundown on how I save the files for these sets to an external storage device and remove them completely from my hard drive for now to free up space, and have the option to reinstall them later in v5?

Thanks,

Marc

Could anyone here give me the basic rundown on how I save the files for these sets to an external storage device and remove them completely from my hard drive for now to free up space, and have the option to reinstall them later in v5?

Each installed Sample Set has files in five different locations. One of them, the Cache File, you will not need to save as this one gets re-generated when needed. Otherwise, here are the four places you would need to locate in order to back up these files by hand:

1) The Organ Definition File. Easy to recognize, because it carries the name of the Sample Set.

2) The Installation Packages. Could be several per Sample Set. Identified by numbers. You can find out these numbers by running Hauptwerk and clicking on "Files... Uninstall" (but don't really uninstall anything, we're just looking!) This will show a list of all Installed Packages, by number, but showing names also so you can figure out what Packages belong to which Organ.

3) User Settings. Each Organ has one Configuration File, and one Backup File.

4) Saved Combinations. Each Organ has one Folder. Initially, this contains 32 "saved" Registration Combinations, all of which are empty. When you save your own Registrations, this is where they end up.

(5) Also possible... there is a Temperaments Folder which could have installed Temperaments for certain of your Sample Sets. Good to back up all of this as well.

I cannot tell you where to find any of these Files or Folders. That would depend upon your own Installation. You might be able to find them by looking around in your System, or in the Folder containing the Hauptwerk program. Some degree of Hacker skills is probably required. But if all you do is look, no harm should come of it. And deleting files by hand after you have saved them elsewhere... should be OK if you are deleting the right files... and if you can find the appropriate places to re-insert them later on some future Installation... where all of the specific locations are going to be different.

Good luck!

[mdyde]

Hello Marc,

I am interested in taking up Lavender Audio's offer to download and try the Hereford 23 stop which we can now freely download. This, now a v5 set does not require an iLOK licence activation, so the question is, will it work / load on v4 just to try it out, or will I need to upgrade to v5 to try it out?

You'd have to check with Lavender Audio for a definitive answer -- it depends whether it's in v4 or v5 format (or maybe both versions are available separately from them). If it isn't encrypted, and is also in v4 format, then you would be able to install and use the same downloaded sample set in either version. (If it's encrypted, which I imagine it would be, then the downloads would be v4 or v5 specific.)

The second question pertains to the first part of my heading. I have a number of sets installed that did not require licensing in v4, and a few others that did. Regardless, some of these sets I rarely if ever use, they're taking up space on my hard drive and I'm nearing my 1 TB capacity and would like to free up space for other sets I'm looking at. So, I'm looking at uninstalling these rarely used sets vs. migrating them to v5, but what I'd like to do is save them to a thumb drive so I have them, and if I choose can re-install them later when I switch over to v5 assuming I have the room on my hard drive.

Could anyone here give me the basic rundown on how I save the files for these sets to an external storage device and remove them completely from my hard drive for now to free up space, and have the option to reinstall them later in v5?

The only supported way to do that is to keep the original downloaded/DVD installation files for those sample sets, then use Hauptwerk's component installer ('File | Install ...') to install them if you later decide you want them installed again.

Trying to do it manually as OrganoPleno described is definitely unsupported (at your own risk), and it would be easy to break your Hauptwerk installation that way if you made a mistake (e.g. due to deleting/changing the wrong files/folders, or due to incorrect file/folder permissions).

Thanks Martin and OrganoPleno for your replies.

The 23 stop Hereford download that is available specifically says it is for v5, but does not require an iLok license so is why I am wondering. I'm guessing it will not install / load on v4.

I think I have the original media for the other sets in question, but would have to look. Being I'm not going to be in the market anytime soon for a new computer and / or larger internal hard drive, would it perhaps be better to look into an external hard drive connected to USB as an example for additional room and not attempt to do what I propose with trying to save the sets to an external device. Or does the external hard drive idea pose some problems as well? Basically I need more room than anything, and if I can avoid trying to save the sets to an external device for use later and not mess things up, I'd certainly prefer to go that way.

Marc

[mdyde]

Thanks, Marc.

Being I'm not going to be in the market anytime soon for a new computer and / or larger internal hard drive, would it perhaps be better to look into an external hard drive connected to USB as an example for additional room and not attempt to do what I propose with trying to save the sets to an external device. Or does the external hard drive idea pose some problems as well? Basically I need more room than anything, and if I can avoid trying to save the sets to an external device for use later and not mess things up, I'd certainly prefer to go that way.

It's up to you, but you'd need to (re-)run the Hauptwerk installer to move your existing installation if you did decided to move it to an external/different drive. (See the 'Changing installation locations' section in the user guide for that, and make sure you use 'File | Backup ...' in Hauptwerk first, since moving a lot of data sometimes fails.)

Also, an external USB drive might possibly be considerably slower than your internal drive.

As previously mentioned, I too would recommend relocating the folder used for Sample sets and components to a larger (2TB) external USB connected drive; this drive would need to be attached to your system every time you started Hauptwerk. This folder is used when organs and temperaments are installed, and when the cache files are constructed but not when loading and playing instruments.

I would buy a drive made by a major company and perhaps one you’ve used before.

The Hauptwerk installer will relocate this folder from its existing location to the new location on your 2TB external drive for you by selecting Custom installation set and specifying the new location for Sample sets and components when you run it to re-install Hauptwerk. See page 18/19 of the HW 4 User Guide. You can run the installer for the currently installed version of Hauptwerk to carry out this sort of operation. Run the HW backup before starting and if you are cautious you might take an OS backup of this folder before starting out - the HW backup does not backup this folder.

I would recommend doing this under HW 4 so that after the “relocation” you can check that everything is still working before you embark on the migration to HW 5. (Do one thing at a time....)

If you are a MAC user and have to reinstalled all sample sets once you have moved to HW 5, then of course a different strategy would be called for. You might still use an external drive as discussed above but would have to install each sample set afresh from the distribution media (for HW 5 where appropriate) once HW 5 was installed.

You could then delete organs from your collection at any convenient time on HW 4 or HW 5 or just leave them be. Deleting files from the Hauptwerk folders needs to be done with considerable care (and as pointed out by Martin) is not recommended and is not supported by MDA

When I have bought sample sets in the past I have ordered media so I had a backup of the organ. (However having gone through the HW 4 -> HW 5 migration most of the media is now out of date and useless!).

I always copy the media / downloads for each sample set I acquire to a large drive (actually two hard drives as the first became full) and use this as my library of sample sets. I then install the instruments into HW from this “library copy” of the media. This means that if I delete an organ (and its sample set) I can chose to install it again from the “library”. I make copies of this “library” to an external hard drive as backup (and yes I know that most of the samples set suppliers will allow me to download the sample set again if I needed to do that…).

I applaud your getting everything ready before starting on your migration to HW 5 - I did this and it did make things smoother!

Iain

Marc,

I echo the suggestion already made by OrganPleno to delete the cache files for organs you do not use regularly. These take up quite a bit of space and are easily generated again later without any extra work. HW will simply regenerate them the next time you ask to load those organs. This takes a while (depending on the size of the sample set and the power of your computer) but there is no other disadvantage I can see. This does not touch all the related user files (config, combinations, ...) but these are tiny in comparison. Deleting the cache files may still be considered "unsupported" but I do not see how this will harm your HW installation. The danger would come from you mistakenly deleting some other files.

There is another place on your disk that might contain HW data - if you are storing the archive (.rar) files from which you load these sample sets in the first place. There is no reason to store these on your main disk drive. I used to keep a shelf full of DVD ROMs for this, but recently I purchased a couple 128 GB USB sticks online and these are my archival storage now. This cost me only about $50. It is amazing hw many pipe organs can be virtually stored in a cubic centimeter nowadays!

Martin (I hope you read this - or I'll have to suggest it elsewhere), perhaps we should have a menu function in the future that deletes the cache for an organ. This would not be quite the same thing as the "unload organ" item we have currently, as this latter item only frees the organ from RAM but retains the cache file on the disk I believe.

Les

[mdyde]

Martin (I hope you read this - or I'll have to suggest it elsewhere), perhaps we should have a menu function in the future that deletes the cache for an organ. This would not be quite the same thing as the "unload organ" item we have currently, as this latter item only frees the organ from RAM but retains the cache file on the disk I believe.

Hello Les,

Yes -- that's been requested previously and is logged as an enhancement request.

Thanks again guys for the replies. Much to consider, and yes, I am certainly trying to do my due diligence before I switch to v5. I have everything in place to do it now if I want, but taking my time and a few things I'd like to address before I do. Which sets to keep, is there another way to add space for additional sets, etc. One thing I should probably investigate is if I have a slot for another larger capacity hard drive and go that route? This is an area where I'm by no means an expert!

Marc