163. I need assistance with a hard drive version of the UltraPAK, Audiophile or OmniPAK that I purchased.

If you received your program on the hard drive, you have a few options for installation.

First, double-click on the Band-in-a-Box® Setup.exe file on the root level of the hard drive. It gives you the following installation options.

  • Option #1 - Run Band-in-a-Box® directly from the USB drive only. 
    View the video tutorial: http://www.pgmusic.com/?vid=7yjPTsBd4_A
    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. You can use the programs as they are, pre-installed on the USB drive. There are shortcuts to run Band-in-a-Box® and RealBand on the root level of the hard drive. Any additional programs and shortcuts are located in the "PGMusic" folder.

  • Option #2 - Install Band-in-a-Box® on your computer hard drive, but leave the RealTracks and RealDrums on the USB hard drive. 
    View the video tutorial: http://www.pgmusic.com/?vid=NS8pvjQ7U1U
    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. This is also useful for upgrading an existing version of Band-in-a-Box® that you have installed on your computer.

    You can still use RealTracks and RealDrums, but they won't take up extra space on your internal hard drive. Instead, you will use the RealTracks and RealDrums preferences dialogs in Band-in-a-Box® and RealBand to specify a custom location of the RealTracks and Drums folders - X:\bb\RealTracks and X:\bb\Drums, where X is the drive letter your computer has assigned to the USB drive (OR X:\PGMusic\Programs\bb\RealTracks and X:\PGMusic\Programs\bb\Drums if you purchased the hard drive prior to September 2009.

    In other words, this option installs all of the files in the bb and RealBand folders except for the RealTracks and Drums folders, and also installs any additional Band-in-a-Box® songs and lessons.

    Note: If you are unplugging and adding/removing USB devices, the drive letter assigned to the hard drive may change - if so, you would need to modify the custom location, or plug in your devices in an order that gives the PG Music disk the same letter.

  • 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.

    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. See the documentation on the hard drive to find out exactly how much disk space is required for the version you have. If you have an Audiophile edition, note that you would need to copy the RealTracks and Drums folders manually if you wanted the uncompressed wave files on your internal hard drive. However, this wouldn't be very practical since it requires over 800GB of free disk space.

    It is simplest to choose the same destination location for your RealTracks and Drums folders as you do for Band-in-a-Box®. For example:
    Band-in-a-Box® - C:\bb
    RealBand - C:\RealBand
    RealDrums - C:\bb
    RealTracks - C:\bb.

  • 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.

 

If your computer does not recognize the hard drive, it is most likely a power supply issue. Another possibility is that the connection between the hard disk and enclosure is loose.

Power supply: Different computers and laptops deliver more/less power to the USB ports. (This information applies to 2.5 inch USB powered drives, not the 3.5 inch Audiophile editions that use an external power source.)

  • On one end of the USB cable, there is a second USB connector you can use for extra power (usually a little smaller than the main one). If your cable looks like that, first make sure you have the larger connector plugged into your computer. It is *normally* only necessary to use the one plug.
  • If that doesn't work, try connecting the main plug directly to a USB port on the back of your computer, rather than a USB hub or ports on the monitor/keyboard/front of the computer case. Unless you have a self-powered USB hub (i.e. one that plugs into the wall, or battery-powered) it doesn't have any more current drive than is available on its usb connection to the mother-computer. So each single port on a hub often doesn't have enough power to drive some devices. USB ports on the front of your computer etc. can be similar to this.
  • You could try connecting the extra power USB plug to another port (so you have both cables plugged in). Note that there is often a maximum current available per pair of vertically stacked USB ports, so you may have better luck bridging between two pairs. Also, if you have other USB powered devices that require a lot of power, such as audio interfaces or a MIDI keyboard, it would be best if each of those had its own pair.
  • The default power management for many laptops, is set to power-off the external power to USB ports when they go to sleep. On some computers it can even be set up to deliver less power or no power if you are running off the battery. It is a good idea to look at the options in the control panel 'power' settings and/or My Computer-Hardware control panel.
  • If you happen to have a lot of 'power-hungry' USB devices, you might consider purchasing a self-powered USB hub.

Loose connection: Sometimes the connection between the SATA drive and the enclosure can come loose in transit. This is very easy to resolve. Unscrew the two little screws on the end of the drive and remove the SATA drive from the enclosure. You will see that the drive plugs into a connector on the end of the enclosure. You can unplug the drive from that connector and plug it in again (we call this re-seating the drive). Re-seating the drive will not void your warranty.

 

If you get an error message during setup or occasionally during normal use... Any one of the following error messages suggest a power supply problem or loose connection as explained above and are normally easily resolved: "Device not ready" (most likely the disk needs to be re-seated); "delayed write failed" (not enough / inconsistent power); "source file is corrupt" when copying files to internal hard drive (not enough / inconsistent power); "Drivers not installed" (most likely loose connection).

 

If you have Windows Vista or Windows 7 and you are getting errors while running Band-in-a-Box® and other programs from the hard drive, it is most likely a permissions problem, where Band-in-a-Box® doesn't have the correct privileges to write files to it's folder. This should NOT be a problem with Band-in-a-Box® 2010 and higher, however if it is, there are a number of possible solutions. One solution is to disable User Account Control. This is done in the Windows control panel | User Accounts. Another solution is to right-click on Band-in-a-Box® and select 'Run As Administrator'. A third option is to install the Band-in-a-Box® program to your internal hard drive and run it from there (you can still keep the RealTracks on the USB drive).

 

Some other general points and frequently asked questions

  • When you first plug the HD in, Windows may ask you what action you want to take. You can either close that window, or choose 'Open folder to browse files'. Either way, you can access the HD through My Computer. On some of the hard drive enclosures there is a small LED that flashes blue when the drive is being accessed, such as when you first connect it. On others, there is a green light if the unit is receiving any power, and red if it is transferring data.

  • You should use the Safely Remove Hardware icon in your taskbar (bottom right side of your computer screen) before physically disconnecting the drive from your computer. Sometimes the icon is in the group of "other icons". If that doesn't work (you get a message saying that it can't be stopped), make sure the drive isn't in use, by closing programs and folder windows. For example, if you are browsing the hard drive contents through Windows Explorer or have the Band-in-a-Box® program running, you won't be able to safely eject (If it still doesn't work, you could reboot your computer before disconnecting the drive).

  • You can install updates and patches to the programs in the same way that you would normally, except that the update patch installers will not necessarily be able to locate the destination folder automatically. Make sure to select the correct destination location. For example, if the drive shows as the G: drive, you would install a Band-in-a-Box® update to G:\bb (OR G:\PGMusic\Programs\bb if you purchased the hard drive prior to September 2009). You would install a RealBand update to G:\RealBand (OR G:\PGMusic\Programs\RealBand if you purchased the hard drive prior to September 2009). For PowerTracks Pro Audio and other programs included on your hard drive, you would install to G:\PGMusic\Programs\...

  • Some people wonder about backing up the drive. If you choose the option to install Band-in-a-Box® and all of the RealTracks files to your internal hard drive, you can essentially keep the hard disk as a backup. There are some files that you wouldn't have backed up, like the Installer files, Readme files, and other programs (if you have the OmniPAK). You can, if you want, make a backup of the entire hard disk contents, simply by selecting all files and folders on the root level of the hard drive, and copying them to another disk. Some hard disks have a hidden file called datalist.asc on the root level of the disk - you want to copy this file also (there are folder options in Windows to show hidden files and folders). More recent hard drives have no files that are hidden like that.

  • If you installed a Band-in-a-Box® 2010 or higher upgrade on disc or download to an earlier version of the hard drive (e.g. Band-in-a-Box® 2009 hard drive), and you are running Windows Vista or 7, then you should install the Band-in-a-Box® 2009 Hard Drive patch for Windows Vista and 7.

  • Don't hesitate to contact us if you are having difficulty.


Alyssa - PG Music