Dave Gelzleichter Posted October 23, 2023 Share Posted October 23, 2023 I'm in the process of helping my brother in law, update his DAW. He is still using PA9, with windows XP. He has acquired a used computer with an I5 processor, and 16gb of ram. It came with windows 10 on the HD. His idea was to get a 2TB External drive, and migrate the OS to that drive. His thinking was if something went wrong with the computer, he could plug the external drive into another computer and everything would work. I told him I didn't think that would work. My question is, would it be possible to use an external drive to handle CbB and all the audio. My suggestion was to put a sata ssd inside and be done with it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glenn Stanton Posted October 23, 2023 Share Posted October 23, 2023 you can use an external drive for OS (the boot settings will allow it), but it's not really interchangeable with another machine because of physical component differences that Windows will detect and require activation on. however, the external drive (assuming USB) will be slower than an internal drive and cause more interrupts (like interfering with the audio IO on the USB). one thing i do for my laptops - i swap the DVD drive socket with my OS (the DVD drive is the slower speed connection in most cases) and put my content / project disk into the primary slot (faster, sometimes 2x faster). (also -- all SSD drive). then i have a couple of "low usage" external drives for my cloud content (i only sync to the cloud drives not operate with them directly to avoid USB interrupts and file contention) and archive, downloads, etc type content. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Vere Posted October 23, 2023 Share Posted October 23, 2023 Samsung has an app called the Magician. I used it to update 3 different computers OS drives from smaller to larger faster SDD drives. It takes about 20 minutes. You connect the new drive and the Magician will clone the old drive. Swap them out and your back in business. So no need for a external drive. If it is a desktop it will have room for probably minimum of 3 drives anyway. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Gelzleichter Posted October 23, 2023 Author Share Posted October 23, 2023 Thank you, Glenn and John, for your replies. I knew he could not move the OS from one machine to another. Thanks for reminding me why. When I replaced the hard drives in my laptop, and my wife's, I used a Samsung app, to clone the old drives. I can't remember if it was Magician. I couldn't get them to boot from the new ssd. I had to reinstall windows both times. Sometimes I get myself in too deep. So this time I thought I'd ask questions ahead of time. I'll have him get a sata drive, so speed won't be an issue. God bless Ya, Dave G Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Vere Posted October 23, 2023 Share Posted October 23, 2023 As I said I did this on 3 computers. 2 desktop and one laptop and all 3 booted up and are still working to this day. I would imagine they have made many updates to the app. I’ve had at least 3 in the last year. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glenn Stanton Posted November 10, 2023 Share Posted November 10, 2023 not necessarily an "external" drive but typically a separate one to avoid OS and other activities on the drive causing issues with the audio streaming on/off the disk. seems to be less of an issue with SSD (imho). my content disk, OS disk, and recording project disks are three separate SSD drives with only the OS being internal and the other two attached to my USB3 ports. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Vere Posted November 11, 2023 Share Posted November 11, 2023 The simplest way to do this is drag and drop your Cakewalk Projects folder to a second drive be it internal or external. This creates a copy that you can now work from. A few other things I would also do. Copy this to a 3 and even a 4th location before you delete the originals on C drive. And open the new copies first to test them as well. I like to have a minimum of 3 copies for back up. Back up storage is dirt cheap. Now in preferences /folder locations change the default project folder location to the new drive so new projects will be stored there. Your start screen will still show the original locations so don’t use that until you have repopulated it with the new location versions. So open the project by either browsing there or by double clicking on them in the new location. If your not short of space on C drive I would leave the original copies there but rename the folder as “Backup CWP Nov2023”. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Gelzleichter Posted November 14, 2023 Author Share Posted November 14, 2023 I finally got the chance to schedule a day to get Dave up and running. Using Magician we cloned his old drive without the need for foul language. Everything is good. John I will steer him to some of your vidios. He doesn't do midi just audio, can you recommend a couple to start? With us both being retired it's hard to find days we're both free.😁 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Vere Posted November 14, 2023 Share Posted November 14, 2023 @Dave Gelzleichter My playlist was made to watch in order. Unlike most I start out teaching you how to find your way around Cakewalks interface. Each video has an end screen to take you to the next in sequence. He can skip the midi videos. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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