Very slow Save on first Save of every project

[Michael Richards]

No matter what I do, and I have ample resources, the first save of each project is very slow, over a minute. Sometimes it even times out and asks if I want to close project. When I say no and go to save the file it saves it immediately.

This happens sometimes when I reopen Sonar and save it the first time. This issue never happens when I save it any other time. 

I'm running Win 11 on a Dell computer.

[Michael Richards]

I put my computer under a heavy strain of copying 195,000 files from my C ssd  to my H hd. After the initial save, subsequent saves were immediate. So, there is not a memory, C drive space, or CPU issue. Does anybody have an idea what is causing such a long initial save time?

[AB99]

BTW, I would not save to a C drive that has the operating system on it. 

I hope your problem gets solved.

[David Baay]

46 minutes ago, Michael Richards said:

I put my computer under a heavy strain of copying 195,000 files from my C ssd  to my H hd. After the initial save, subsequent saves were immediate.

I think you answered your own question. The fist save has to copy all the audio files to the new drive. Subsequent saves only have to save the project file.

What you need to do is save the project to H: before importing/recording any audio. This will create a per-project Audio folder into which the audio files will be written as they're created. If you don't do that initial save, they first get placed in the Global Audio Folder (on C by default) from which they have to be copied to H:.

Alternatively, you can go to File > Audio Data in preferences, and change  the Global Audio Folder to be on H: so that the O/S only has to change the path reference to the per-project folder when you save it, and not physically write a new file to the disk.

Edited August 10 by David Baay

[AB99]

16 minutes ago, David Baay said:

I think you answered your own question. The fist save has to copy all the audio files to the new drive. Subsequent saves only have to save the project file.

What you need to do is save the project to H: before importing/recording any audio. This will create a per-project Audio folder into which the audio files will be written as they're created. If you don't do that initial save, they first get placed in the Global Audio Folder (on C by default) from which they have to be copied to H:.

Alternatively, you can go to File > Audio Data in preferences, and change  the Global Audio Folder to be on H: so that the O/S only has to change the path reference to the per-project folder when you save it, and not physically write a new file to the disk.

Isn't your "alternate" option preferable, so that the the C drive with the 0/S does not get large files on it on a regular basis?   That was defintely true years ago, but I am not sure that is still the preferable situation.

[Michael Richards]

I don't understand this, at all. Many times the first save does not have any audio files.

You say to save the project to H: before importing/recording any audio. The H drive is a hard drive and the C drive is a ssd. Why would I not use the faster drive?

Please explain. I have not changed a thing in 20 years. This saving issue only started in the last 2 months.

[Michael Richards]

2 minutes ago, AB99 said:

Isn't your "alternate" option preferable, so that the the C drive with the 0/S does not get large files on it on a regular basis?   That was defintely true years ago, but I am not sure that is still the preferable situation.

My files on the C drive get moved to the H drive and my G drive when the project is finished. I never have an abundance of projects on the C drive.

[Michael Richards]

22 minutes ago, David Baay said:

I think you answered your own question. The fist save has to copy all the audio files to the new drive. Subsequent saves only have to save the project file.

What you need to do is save the project to H: before importing/recording any audio. This will create a per-project Audio folder into which the audio files will be written as they're created. If you don't do that initial save, they first get placed in the Global Audio Folder (on C by default) from which they have to be copied to H:.

Alternatively, you can go to File > Audio Data in preferences, and change  the Global Audio Folder to be on H: so that the O/S only has to change the path reference to the per-project folder when you save it, and not physically write a new file to the disk.

I changed the Global Audio Folder to the H drive and there was still a long first save.

[David Baay]

3 minutes ago, AB99 said:

Isn't your "alternate" option preferable, so that the the C drive with the 0/S does not get large files on it on a regular basis?

Probably, yes. And ideally, the drive where project and audio are stored should also be an SSD. Personally I do both: Global Audio is on an SSD separate from the O/S and I usually save projects early in the creation process before any audio files are imported/recorded/rendered.

[David Baay]

7 minutes ago, Michael Richards said:

Many times the first save does not have any audio files.

In that case, I would tend to suspect something related to Antivirus or other security features. Or are you maybe using a very large custom project template pre-populated with tracks and plugins...?

[AB99]

7 minutes ago, Michael Richards said:

My files on the C drive get moved to the H drive and my G drive when the project is finished. I never have an abundance of projects on the C drive.

I understand.  But continually putting large files on your C drive that can easily be saved to a non-operating system drive is still recommended from sources I have read.  You want to have optimal health for your system drive.  And by the way, it is also a good idea to have the stored files that are important on more than one secondary drive.  (Some people even have cloud storage as a backup as well.)

 

[Michael Richards]

On 8/10/2025 at 12:29 PM, AB99 said:

Isn't your "alternate" option preferable, so that the the C drive with the 0/S does not get large files on it on a regular basis?   That was defintely true years ago, but I am not sure that is still the preferable situation.

 

On 8/10/2025 at 12:11 PM, David Baay said:

I think you answered your own question. The fist save has to copy all the audio files to the new drive. Subsequent saves only have to save the project file.

What you need to do is save the project to H: before importing/recording any audio. This will create a per-project Audio folder into which the audio files will be written as they're created. If you don't do that initial save, they first get placed in the Global Audio Folder (on C by default) from which they have to be copied to H:.

Alternatively, you can go to File > Audio Data in preferences, and change  the Global Audio Folder to be on H: so that the O/S only has to change the path reference to the per-project folder when you save it, and not physically write a new file to the disk.

I did everything you said to do. No change. First save almost took 2 minutes. I did many things. Only have a couple of projects in both C and H drive, and saved the file before I wrote any music. Completely emptied the Audio Data and Picture Cache. No changes.

[David Baay]

Exclude all Sonar-related app and document folders from scanning by Windows Defender or other antivirus.

[Michael Richards]

On 8/12/2025 at 10:34 AM, David Baay said:

Exclude all Sonar-related app and document folders from scanning by Windows Defender or other antivirus.

Thank you, that is a good suggestion. I already did that. I added all vst locations but that didn't help.

[David Baay]

Kind of out of ideas. Next step might be to install Microsoft's Process Explorer to see what all is going on. But I would also just check disk activity in Windows Resource Monitor to see what files are being written/accessed during a slow save.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/process-explorer

[Michael Richards]

On 8/14/2025 at 10:46 PM, David Baay said:

Kind of out of ideas. Next step might be to install Microsoft's Process Explorer to see what all is going on. But I would also just check disk activity in Windows Resource Monitor to see what files are being written/accessed during a slow save.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/process-explorer

I downloaded this file. From what I can understand WmiPrvSE.exe:4900 is the process that has the most usage.

[Bristol_Jonesey]

29 minutes ago, Michael Richards said:

I downloaded this file. From what I can understand WmiPrvSE.exe:4900 is the process that has the most usage.

Have you Googled what that process is?

[Helios.G]

I'm not sure if anyone's asked this already, but how old is your OS drive?  Is your OS on an SSD or HDD?  If on SSD, they tend to start slowing down when the life of the drive is nearing it's end, but also when it is near capacity.  On the HDD front, damage to the platter might slow system writes and reads before it fails.  Just something to think about, only you'd know how your system is set up.

[David Baay]

3 hours ago, Michael Richards said:

From what I can understand WmiPrvSE.exe:4900 is the process that has the most usage.

Is it equally as active on a re-save as on the initial save? This may be a red herring but the Interwebz say:

"The wmiprvse.exe process is the WMI Provider host. It's a part of what's known as the Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) component within Microsoft Windows.

It's normally used on desktop systems connected to a corporate network so the IT department can pull information about that desktop, or create monitoring tools that alerts IT when there's something wrong with that computer."

Is this a personal machine?

EDIT: On further reading I gather it can also be used for some other legitimate purposes on a non-enterprise machine, but high CPU usage can indicate a problem, including the process being exploited by malware. Given that it's only manifesting in this one particular use case, I would think that's unlikely but might be worth doing a malware scan and stopping to think what else you've deliberately installed recently.

Edited Saturday at 03:47 PM by David Baay

[Michael Richards]

39 minutes ago, Helios.G said:

I'm not sure if anyone's asked this already, but how old is your OS drive?  Is your OS on an SSD or HDD?  If on SSD, they tend to start slowing down when the life of the drive is nearing it's end, but also when it is near capacity.  On the HDD front, damage to the platter might slow system writes and reads before it fails.  Just something to think about, only you'd know how your system is set up.

A couple of answers. I am not on a network, this is a personal computer. It is 2 1/2 years old. It is a 2 tb SSD with 500 gb free. CPU is i7 12700K (3.61GHz), 32 gb 4400 ram.

2 months ago this issue never happened. It never happened before. I have been using every version of Cakewalk since the early 1990s. I've asked the internet if any Dell or Win 11 update has cause a problem like this.

After the initial save, the subsequent saves are 1-2 seconds.