If you have copied all your VST(I) dll's to your own VST folders, then you only need to tell Reaper where they are. Reaper doesn't move anything around, it only scans for VST dll's and makes note of their location so they are available to you. If you had it set for the C:\ drive, then it's going to scan the entire C: drive, because it looks at the folders you specify and then scans every subfolder underneath the one you specified (as do most DAW's).

Just go to the Reaper Preferences screen and in the left hand navigation pane, select "Plug-ins/VST". There you can select the folders where your VST's are located. and that's where Reaper will scan. Sometimes a VST will cause it to crash, but you can usually recover and continue scanning. The list of folders to scan is just a semi-colon separated list.

On my computer, I have moved all my VST's into separate folders for better management:

"D:\AppsData\VST\32-bit"
"D:\AppsData\VST\32-bit Only"
"D:\AppsData\VST\64-bit"
"D:\AppsData\VST\64-bit Only"

And I have also run the jbridger utility to create jbridged VST's for the opposite type of DAW. So I have:

"D:\AppsData\VST\JBridge\32-bit For 64-bit DAW"
"D:\AppsData\VST\JBridge\64-bit For 32-bit DAW"

The "32-bit for 64-bit DAW" includes jbridged VSTs from only the "32-bit only" folder, and the 64-bit for 32-bit DAW" includes jbridged VSTs from only the "64-bit only" folder (since I already have separate VST's for all the others.

Because they let you, I have both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of each DAW installed on my computer.

In the 32-bit DAWs (Reaper, Sonar, MixCraft, etc), I set the VST folders as follows:
"D:\AppsData\VST\32-bit"
"D:\AppsData\VST\32-bit Only"
"D:\AppsData\VST\JBridge\64-bit For 32-bit DAW"

in the 64-bit DAWs (Reaper, Sonar, MixCraft, etc), I set the VST folders as follows:
"D:\AppsData\VST\64-bit"
"D:\AppsData\VST\64-bit Only"
"D:\AppsData\VST\JBridge\32-bit For 64-bit DAW"

I usually only have a problem with a weird VST that doesn't want to scan correctly, but otherwise, it works just fine in all the DAWs.

John

Laptop-HP Omen I7 Win11Pro 32GB 2x2TB, 1x4TB SSD
Desktop-ASUS-I7 Win10Pro 32GB 2x1.5TB, 2x2TB, 1x4TB SATA

BB2025/UMC404HD/Casios/Cakewalk/Reaper/Studio One/MixBus/Notion/Finale/Dorico/Noteworthy/NI/Halion/IK

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