OK Guys, you are in many cases way above my head. Here's my setup:
C drive is 128GB solid state.
D is actually my Optical (CD) drive
E (I had called this D in my original post) is where I have lots of room and want to put content.
I also have external USB drives I could use to store stuff if it ever came to that.
I bought The PGMusic USB Hard Drive.

My original thought was that running BIAB from the PGMusic HD was not the safest thing, in terms of if anything went wrong, it could be my ultimate backup. I also thought - perhaps not correctly - that running the program from an internal drive would be faster.

In addition to BIAB, I will be installing a DAW and parts of the Komplete library.

So my tiny little C drive needs to be kept as lean as possible.

rharv,
I understand the logic of paragraph: "One option I did, was to copy the whole external USB drive to an internal drive for regular use, and then tuck the external drive away as my backup. " I think that was part of my original intent. My C drive is only 128GB, but I thought (perhaps not logically) that running BB from the PGMusic external USB HD would be slower than runnning from an internal drive. Also wasn't sure if saving songs and ideas to that PGMusic HD was the safest thing to do?

So running from a drive OTHER than C, and OTHER than the PGMusic drive, was my intent.
-And I DO like the idea of ".. tuck the external drive away as my backup"

When you copied the entire drive to a separate internal drive "for regular use" is there other data on that drive as well? Do you put the copied material in it's own folder, or put it exactly as is on the HD we purchased? I see 4 individual folders - "bb; Documentation; PGMusic; RealBand"; and then files "autorun; Band-in-a-Box (32-bit); Band-in-a Box (64-bit); datalist.asc; License; ReadMe First; RealBand;Setup". My question would be, can that hard drive you copy to also have other data on it without interfering with using BIAB?

Grem also says he has it all on an external drive, with nothing on the C drive. So that is what I could do, copying it totally to my E drive and running it from there? (But I thought somewhere the directions said there would be some files placed on the C drive)

So if it is possible to run the entire program from my E drive, AS IF that was the PGMusic HD, and save space on C drive as well as have a complete backup? I had always thought there had to be SOME files on the C drive just to register with Windows in some way, to have it run correctly? Again, my lack of computer knowledge rears it's head.

Am I confusing this with When you: "Then I ran the installer and installed things so the programs can run on C: and the rest of the USB disk (Realtracks and Realdrums) is on the aforementioned internal E: drive." ... Is that the installation option #1, (which I may or may not have tried once)


It would be great to have everything on the E drive, put away the PGMusic drive for safety, and have as little as possible on the C drive. But when I install my DAW (Reason and/or Studio One) with as little as possible on the C drive, will they be able to access the BIAB as an insert?

At this point, I have a whole lot of PGMusic files on my C drive, probably from installing it incorrectly on previous attempt(s).
There is a "bb" folder, which includes folders "BBPlugin; "DX Settings"; "Uninstall" and an application "bbw4"
Also, inside "Program Files" folder is:
Folder: "VSTPlugins", with 2 .dll files
Folder: "PG Music Inc", containing a folder of "Band-in-a-Box Sounds", which contains a folder "GUI"; another "Programs", and 8 files
Folder: "Common Files" < VST2, with Band-in-a-Box DAW VST Plugin.dll
Folder: "Common Files" < VST3, with 2 other folders plus "Band-in-a-Box DAW VST3 Plugin.vst3
Folder: "Steinberg> VSTPlugins", which contains Band-in-a-Box DAW VST Plugin.dll
and hopefully not much more.
Oh yeah,
Folder "Program Files (x86)" has a bunch also,including
Folder: "PowerTracksDirectX Plugins".
Folder: "Coyote"
I'm not even going to look in the Common Files. I'm sure you can tell what I did wrong originally.

At this point, should I:
1) disconnect my PGMusic drive from my computer
2) completely delete BIAB and whatever else PGMusic from Windows delete programs page?
3) copy everything from PGMusic HD to my E (internal HD) just the way it is, with no regard to other folders already on that drive?
4) Run BIAB installation program from the E drive as if I was running it from the original PGMusic HD < BUT WHICH OPTION? Don't make the same mistake I made before!>
5. If I do this, I do not need to install anything onto my C drive?

Will other applications know how to find BIAB as the plugin? If it's a VST doesn't it somehow have to be within one or more VST folders?

Thank you so much.
Rockinbop