Moving refills to external drive

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antic604

17 Nov 2017

My Surface Pro 4 has 256Gb of internal storage, which is fine for my needs working mostly with MIDI and non sample-based VSTs in other DAWs. Also, Reason is pretty light in terms of space it takes on the disc. However, I was wondering - if ever become necessary - if it's possible to Reason installed on main disc, but keep the refills (factory stuff is 3.5Gb in Reason 10) on an external drive or a microSD card?

I can obviously locate the files and move them manually, but I can't seem to find a way of "telling" Reason where they are like I can in Live, Bitwig or Studio One. Maybe it's hidden in some text / xml file that I need to edit?

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chimp_spanner
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17 Nov 2017

Hey! I've just had to re-install *everything* so I've been going through this exact process very carefully to get everything how I want it. The process to move libraries is as follows.

First, move/cut+paste your Soundbanks folder from c:\ProgramData\Propellerhead Software\Soundbanks to a new location, so for example d:\Libraries\Propellerheads\Soundbanks

Next, press Windows and type CMD, right click the search result and run it as an administrator.

Finally type: mklink /D "c:\ProgramData\Propellerhead Software\Soundbanks" "d:\Libraries\Propellerheads\Soundbanks"

And it's done. You can do the same for "c:\Users\YourName\Music\Propellerhead Content" and "c:\Users\YourName\AppData\Roaming\Propellerhead Software\Rackextensions"

What I've done is made a folder on another drive/partition called

-Libraries
--Propellerheads
---Propellerhead Content
---Rackextensions
---Soundbanks

I've also got other folders in there for ReFills, Skins, etc. Nice and tidy!

Also, I was just about to ask on here about the practicality of using an SD card as an expansion drive for audio libraries so I'd be interested to hear other's thoughts on this!

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EnochLight
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17 Nov 2017

chimp_spanner wrote:
17 Nov 2017
Also, I was just about to ask on here about the practicality of using an SD card as an expansion drive for audio libraries so I'd be interested to hear other's thoughts on this!
SD card transfer rates are typically very slow compared to SSD, or even recent mechanical hard drives, so I wouldn't recommend that if at all possible. I suppose in a pinch it would work, though.

Also, can I ask you something? Using your CMD prompt method above, is it possible to tell Reason that you've moved an entire folder instead of having to do each refill or sample one by one? I've got 1 folder that houses everything, and I can't imagine having to do that for every refill/file inside! :S :shock:
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chimp_spanner
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17 Nov 2017

Hmm well when it comes to ReFills (as in ones you purchased or downloaded outside of the content manager or FSBs) I'm faaaaairly sure you can just move them wherever. Maybe if you add the folder they're in to Reason's locations on the left it'll know where to look for them the next time you load a song that needs them. AFAIK you only need to use the CMD line thing for the stuff the application needs like soundbanks, REs and the new content manager stuff.

*Edit: but yeah sorry in answer to your question you could absolutely move entire folders at a time. No problem.

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Karim
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17 Nov 2017

I confirm that!
I'm moving a near tera byte collection of refill since 2001 !!
Except for samples out of a refill ( let's say a loopmaster folder) :puf_bigsmile:

chimp_spanner wrote:
17 Nov 2017
Hmm well when it comes to ReFills (as in ones you purchased or downloaded outside of the content manager or FSBs) I'm faaaaairly sure you can just move them wherever. Maybe if you add the folder they're in to Reason's locations on the left it'll know where to look for them the next time you load a song that needs them. AFAIK you only need to use the CMD line thing for the stuff the application needs like soundbanks, REs and the new content manager stuff.

*Edit: but yeah sorry in answer to your question you could absolutely move entire folders at a time. No problem.
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EnochLight
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17 Nov 2017

chimp_spanner wrote:
17 Nov 2017
Hmm well when it comes to ReFills (as in ones you purchased or downloaded outside of the content manager or FSBs) I'm faaaaairly sure you can just move them wherever. Maybe if you add the folder they're in to Reason's locations on the left it'll know where to look for them the next time you load a song that needs them. AFAIK you only need to use the CMD line thing for the stuff the application needs like soundbanks, REs and the new content manager stuff.

*Edit: but yeah sorry in answer to your question you could absolutely move entire folders at a time. No problem.
Cool, thanks. It's not so much the refills I have an issue with; it's all of my external samples, patches, song files, etc - that require other samples, patches, or refills that are stored elsewhere. I can't stand waiting for Reason's search box to find missing content, as it takes ages to search!
Win 10 | Ableton Live 11 Suite |  Reason 12 | i7 3770k @ 3.5 Ghz | 16 GB RAM | RME Babyface Pro | Akai MPC Live 2 & Akai Force | Roland System 8, MX1, TB3 | Dreadbox Typhon | Korg Minilogue XD

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chimp_spanner
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17 Nov 2017

Yeah it's not terrible obvious but the directories and ReFills you drag onto the left are considered "locations" so if you drag the master/root folder containing the new location of your samples and then choose "search locations" you won't have to sit and wait for it to go through the file system cos it'll check there first.

I *think*. At least that's the behaviour I've observed. Maybe someone can confirm!

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EnochLight
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17 Nov 2017

chimp_spanner wrote:
17 Nov 2017
Yeah it's not terrible obvious but the directories and ReFills you drag onto the left are considered "locations" so if you drag the master/root folder containing the new location of your samples and then choose "search locations" you won't have to sit and wait for it to go through the file system cos it'll check there first.

I *think*. At least that's the behaviour I've observed. Maybe someone can confirm!
I think I'll experiment with this. Many years ago I inadvertently threw all of my Reason data (all of it - refills, samples, song files, patches, etc) into my Google Drive at one point so I'd have redundant cloud backup, but I don't need it anymore. I want to place them somewhere else but cutting them out of my Google Drive has introduced missing samples/patch/refill issues that made opening old song projects an issue.
Win 10 | Ableton Live 11 Suite |  Reason 12 | i7 3770k @ 3.5 Ghz | 16 GB RAM | RME Babyface Pro | Akai MPC Live 2 & Akai Force | Roland System 8, MX1, TB3 | Dreadbox Typhon | Korg Minilogue XD

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davidicus
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Joined: 18 Jan 2015

18 Nov 2017

i tried to keep all my refills on a NAS but the file browsing from Reason is painfully slow. Reason folks told me it's not optimized for that--sounded like it was pretty low priority. this isn't really a tool intended for corporate pros i guess (not that i am; home servers are fairly commonplace). i ended up leaving some there and filling up the laptop with what i used the most.

kitekrazy
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Joined: 19 Jan 2015

22 Nov 2017

A NAS drive is a slow drive. You would want a WD Black or Gold drive. NAS have slower RPMs.

ajthegoblyn
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Joined: 01 May 2018

01 May 2018

not sure if i did it right, it keeps saying that i already made the folder so it cant be made

antic604

02 May 2018

ajthegoblyn wrote:
01 May 2018
not sure if i did it right, it keeps saying that i already made the folder so it cant be made
I don't remember right now, but one of two folders - the one you link to, or the source one - need to not be there. I think the former, but you might need to experiment.

After that it works great.

gejone
Posts: 6
Joined: 23 May 2017

31 Dec 2018

Thank you for this thread.
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