HDD getting too small

When I set up my HW PC at the beginning of last year I thought that two 2TB SSD's would be plenty, but I can't wean myself from my sampleset habit and they are filling up rapidly. My motherboard will take three M.2 NVMe drives altogether, so the obvious solution is to add a 4TB drive and keep the existing two.

At the moment I have one drive configured as a boot drive and the other one for the caches. I also have an 8TB conventional drive where I keep all the installation files. So the question is, what is going to be the easiest way to do it?

I thought perhaps I could clone my C: drive onto the 4TB drive, then repartition the two 2TB drives to form a single virtual volume for the caches. I think I should be able to use the HW installer to move the caches onto the conventional drive temporarily and then onto the new volume. Hopefully doing it this way would save me having to reinstall Windows or set up the organs again.

In the meantime, is there any way that some of the HW files taking up space on my boot drive can be safely moved to the conventional drive? There are a lot of backup files, for instance, that probably I don't need at all, but it would be nice if I could get HW to default to storing them somewhere other than the boot drive.

[mdyde]

Hello Julian,

The only Hauptwerk files that always get installed/created on the main Windows drive (usually C: ) are:

- Those in "C:\Program File" (the Hauptwerk executables, documentation, etc., all of which are very small).
- Automatic backups, which always get saved to your OS user account's home directory. (You can subsequently delete or move them, manually, but any new ones will always go there.)

All other installation paths can be changed by re-running the installer, and it will try to move them if applicable. However, note that using the installer to move HauptwerkSampleSetsAndComponents does sometimes fail to move all of the files within it, e.g. if a drive times out, or if there are file permission problems. Also, the installer never tries to move the sample set caches themselves if changing the HauptwerkInternalWorkingFiles location -- instead it will simply delete the previous folder and create an empty folder in the new location, since Hauptwerk will then regenerate the caches anyway when needed.

Alternatively, you could move the folders manually before running the installer, and then point the installer to the *parent* directories of their new locations. E.g. see:

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=15690#p117525

How big is each of these directories (right click, Properties on each folder)?

HauptwerkSamplesAndComponents where samplesets are installed, and
HauptwerkInternalWorkingFiles where the cache goes.

I have the cache folder (smaller of the two) on the 2 TB C: SSD with the OS, and the samples folder on a 2 TB external SSD. You might get more life out of it if you balance your folder sizes across disks.

4 TB SSDs are pretty expensive if you could get by with another 2 TB. Also, external SSDs work fine for everything but cache. I have four external 2 TB SSDs, two copies each of installed samples and installation RARs. I've had good performance with the 2 TB Samsung T5.

I just thought I would post an update.

I bought a 4TB Western Digital Black SN750 M.2 NVMe SSD. I installed it onto my motherboard, leaving the 2TB boot drive (also on the motherboard) and the 2TB HW cache drive (on a riser card) in place. However, I couldn't get the PC to boot. So I used Acronis TureImage booted from a USB drive to clone my boot drive onto the new one. Still couldn't get it to start from either drive. So I installed Windows onto the new drive using the Dell recovery USB supplied with the computer. It installed find and was able to boot after that. I downloaded the audio and MIDI drivers and installed HW - St, Anne's, Mosely worked fine. Then Windows decided to start downloading some of the updates that MS has released over the past year or so since I got the PC. Suddenly it would no longer boot. Now I can't reinstall Windows either.

I have returned the drive and I am hoping for a refund. Now that it is gone the computer happily boots from the original SSD so my HW system is working the way it always did (though possibly for not much longer with only about 1% of the C\: drive free).

I'm not sure whether there was a fundamental incompatibility between the new SSD and my motherboard, or indeed whether the drive was faulty. So I don't know if I should try a different 4TB SSD or give up and uninstall some of the organs I don't use much (though these tend to be the ones taking up the least disk space).

My dedicated HW PC is a Dell Precision 3640 workstation with a 10-core i9 processor and 128 GB RAM. I have changed around HDD's and SSD's many times on other computers and occasionally on this one with no problems at all. Is anybody aware of compatibility issues that I need to consider before trying again?

What I do is store install files on an external drive, and on the actual computer I just keep the sample files and caches. Then I go and hand delete caches I don’t use as much. Seems to work for me!

With some motherboards, there are restrictions about the use of the M2 slots, usually it is around the impact on the performance caused by using both slots. I would ask Dell.

On the general issue of the cache drive becoming full, I move selected cache files from the ‘cache drive’ to another drive and replace the cache file on the cache drive with a symbolic link to the relocated cache file. HW always creates the cache file on its cache drive. I do the moving when HW is not running. This works well provided you keep notes records about the moves. It is however not supported by MDA.
You need to have reasonably good IT skills to do this.

See http://forum.hauptwerk.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=12699&p=93589&hilit=mklink#p93589

Iain

Hello,
I would buy an NVMe again. Then first check if the NVMe is error free.
I don't know if WD's SSD Dashboard allows you to check the NVMe.
Iain gave an important compatibility hint. That is also something to check.
I would reach out to Dell and WD support or ask on a support forum.

You can use the Windows mklink command to point to another directory. If you run mklink in a console without parameters, you will get the necessary parameters.

Dell also notoriously doesn’t like you getting third party expansions for their computers, and will choose RAM with weird bus speeds and so on to try to dissuade you from upgrading with anything but what they can provide. So the best idea may be buying a drive from them, as at least you’ll know if it’s compatible or not.

You could try an external USB 3.2 4TB SSD for cache files. My external SSDs on the Dell XPS do run fast enough for cache loading, but I have enough room on my internal system SSD.

Dell also notoriously doesn’t like you getting third party expansions for their computers, and will choose RAM with weird bus speeds and so on to try to dissuade you from upgrading with anything but what they can provide. So the best idea may be buying a drive from them, as at least you’ll know if it’s compatible or not.

Oh, I don't know such problems, because I always built my PCs myself. That's a great pity that independent expansion is made more difficult by such measures.

https://www.dell.com/support/manuals/en ... lang=en-us

Ummm. Dell 3640 only supports internal SSDs up to 2 TB. Specific types on the support page above.

Hi Mark,

I have followed your link, but I do wonder whether the maximum capacities quoted actually reflect what Dell will supply rather than compatibility. For instance, here is the link to the equivalent specifications page to the Dell Mobile Workstation which I use for photography (and which ran HW very well for a while until I got the 3640 as a dedicated HW computer):
https://www.dell.com/support/manuals/en ... lang=en-us

This states that the motherboard supports up to 4 PCIe NVMe drives up to 2 TB, though there is a footnote to the effect that one of the slots has a SATA interface. I actually run it quite happily with one 2TB M.2 SATA SSD, two 2TB M.2 NVMe SSD's and one 8TB M.2 NVMe SSD. I have about a quarter of a million photographs in RAW format and they take up a lot of space.

I suppose I could try putting the 8TB SSD from my laptop into the 3640 and see if it is recognised (it isn't a boot drive). The one thing I didn't try with the 4TB drive was putting it in the slot on the riser card, as the drive that I have there at the moment (for my HW cache) isn't visible in the system set-up, so if I put a new drive there I might not be able to install Windows on it in order to boot from it. The simplest solution would probably be to keep my existing 2TB SSD boot drive, get an 8TB drive to put onto the riser card and keep all my HW files on that. That would be more space than I would use in the foreseeable future. However, it would be very expensive (about the same as two Organ Art Media sample sets) and I am not sure that I could justify the outlay. I am going to have to do something soon, however, as I only have about 16GB left on my boot drive and both HW and Windows keep adding more files to it.

I have returned the 4TB WD drive to the vendor and I am waiting for a refund, though they state that they have a policy of deducting 15% if the packaging has been opened, which of course it has. I am not sure of the legality of this, however, at least in the UK.

Julian,

2 thoughts.
1. HW files are like a gas .... they fill the available space. I started with 215G, now I have 15T!
2. Have you checked that you don't have duplicate cache files? The first time you install an organ a cache file is created. If you later install the same organ in one of the other configs, you create the same cache file again. Delete the one you don't want.

Stephen

Stephen,

Thank-you for the suggestion. I don't really use alternative configurations so that won't help very much.

By the way, rather than deleting the cache files manually (which can be difficult as it isn't straightforward to identify which ones go with which organ), HW will delete the cache prior to rebuilding it if you make a change to which ranks are loaded or at what quality, and then cancel.

Stephen,
By the way, rather than deleting the cache files manually (which can be difficult as it isn't straightforward to identify which ones go with which organ), HW will delete the cache prior to rebuilding it if you make a change to which ranks are loaded or at what quality, and then cancel.

You don't even have to change the rank loading options, which leaves something to remember to fix next time you want to use the organ. Just go to Organ | Load organ adjusting... and press OK. Wait a couple seconds and press Cancel. Cache gone.