Have you purchased a Band-in-a-Box® UltraPAK, which ships on a portable USB hard drive? Once received, there are a few different options for you: Run Band-in-a-Box® directly from the USB drive only, Install Band-in-a-Box® on your computer hard drive (but leave the RealTracks and RealDrums on the USB hard drive), Install Band-in-a-Box® AND RealTracks on your computer hard drive, or choose a Custom Installation!

To summarize these options:

Option #1 - Run Band-in-a-Box® directly from the USB drive only. This allows you to use the hard drive "as is" and run the programs from it. It requires very little free disk space on your internal hard drive. Setup will install and register the PG Music notation fonts, VSC-DXi synth, VSC-VST synth, and PG Music DirectX audio plugins on your computer, but will not install Band-in-a-Box®, RealBand, RealTracks, or RealDrums on your computer's internal hard drive.

Option #2 - Install Band-in-a-Box® on your computer hard drive, but leave the RealTracks and RealDrums on the USB hard drive. This requires more hard disk space, about 2 to 4 GB. In addition to the plugins and fonts, this will install the Band-in-a-Box® and RealBand programs to your computer's hard drive, and allow you to run the programs from there, as if you had installed them from a DVD.

Option #3 - Install Band-in-a-Box® AND RealTracks on your computer hard drive. In addition to everything installed by Option 2, this will copy the RealTracks and RealDrums (Drums) folders from the USB drive to your computer's hard drive, as if you had installed the entire package from DVD. This will allow you to keep the PG Music hard drive primarily for backup, and use Band-in-a-Box® and RealBand (along with the RealTracks) directly from your computer hard drive. NOTE: This option requires a lot of free hard disk space (over 80 GB) since these folders contain many audio files, and the installation may take about an hour to complete depending on how fast your computer is.

Option #4 - Custom Installation - Choose exactly what you want to install. This option is for advanced users who want to be able to select exactly what is installed. For example, you could install RealDrums but not RealTracks, or skip the DX plugins, or install the Video Tutorials, etc.

For more detailed information, visit http://www.pgmusic.com/techfaq51.htm#163

No matter how you install and use your Band-in-a-Box® hard drive, make sure you're saving your songs (or a copy of them) to your own folder not on the hard drive - that way you'll have a back-up copy if your hard drive isn't available to you!

This is helpful. To answer questions from new users, we frequently have to refer to these setup options. Perhaps you would consider making this a sticky.

Great idea Matt - it's sticky now

For my laptop install, I used Option #1. My C:\BB only has two folders and about 2 Meg of data in it to corroborate "very little disk space" that Callie referenced.

My upgrade UltraPak is currently in Honolulu, en route to Australia.

Given that I already have BIAB Pro installed on my C:\ drive, I think option #2 will work best for me. I assume that it will be fine to install the new BIAB over the existing one.

Will there be any problems with the existing RealTracks and RealDrums on my C:\ drive and the ones on the usb hard drive?

No. When you install the 2018 Band-in-a-Box you're asked where RealTracks and RealDrums reside. Once you tell BiaB they are located on the external drive then BiaB will quit using the RealTracks and RealDrums located on your primary drive.

One issue you might encounter though is Windows may change the drive letter if you plug the drive into different USB ports or plug a USB memory stick into a port prior to plugging in the USB drive. You can avoid the drive letter issue by going to control center and manually assigning a drive letter to the external USB drive.

1. I assign an unusually high drive letter to BIAB so it is not dependent on whether other devices are installed.

2. Jim is correct, it's one location or the other. You can always move your older files, but since you bought the Ultrapak, it won't matter; you will have all the files on your new USB drive.

Thanks Jim and Matt, your info is very helpful.

I chose a high drive letter for BiaB.

I read an article that recommended to use letters between M and Z for external drives that you want to keep a stable letter.

M for Music?

Notes

My data is on P for Pro Tools.

I just got my 2018 and was surprised to see it on 7 DVDs rather than an external hard drive. Surprised but not disappointed. DVDs are fine. Wonder if a 32gb thumb drive would be even better? Though for those who opt to run it from USB the load times from a thumb drive would be close to glacial....

And with a 2017 manual with a "What's new" insert for 2018.

If you look at our packages, http://www.pgmusic.com/bbwin.packages.htm, it shows that the UltraPAK and Audiophile ship on a portable hard drive - the Pro, MegaPAK, and PlusPAK ship on DVD or Flash Drive (chosen by the customer during the order process).

If you had chosen the flash drive, note that it would have been loaded with installation files - the program does not run from the flash drive.