Yes, this can all be done. I believe the Installer will walk you through the options. A minimal install puts the minimum needed on the C: drive. Then you can copy the Realdrums and Realtracks (etc) to the other drive and point BiaB to that drive in Options-Preferences if you want to do it manually. Same with RealBand
I do not work here, but the benefits are still awesome Make your sound your own!
Hi GML, Congratulations on your purchase of the UltraPAK +.
You may want to ask your question in the +++ Band-in-a-Box for Mac +++ forum section. I'm sure your question will get more views and better answers than your thread will receive here.
It will also be helpful to state what operating system version your Mini Mac is running.
Rharv is correct. The main program can go on your boot drive, what you called the 1TB HD. The RealTracks and RealDrums (which take up much more storage space) can go on the SSD internal drive. The installer can make this distinction; you do not need to move anything manually afterward. For specific instructions, Jim is correct that the Mac forum would be a better place to get that help. Most of us use the Windows version.
You didn't ask this, but you could decide to install all of BIAB on the 2 TB SSD drive. If your 1TB drive is a hard drive, BIAB will work best on the 2TB SSD.
BIAB 2026 Win Audiophile. Software: Fender Studio One 8, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus Quantom HD8 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
If you simply follow the installation prompts, it will do all the work for you, and since you have the hard drive version, just let it do the "minimal" installation.
That ensures that only the absolutely required software files are installed on your C drive. All the huge audio files and other things remain on the factory hard drive. It will know where to go look for them when they are required.
This is how I have been installing this program ever since I got my first hard drive version many many years ago. The tracks will load into memory and it literally only takes a few seconds to do so.
You can find my music at: www.herbhartley.com Add nothing that adds nothing to the music. You can make excuses or you can make progress but not both.
The magic you are looking for is in the work you are avoiding.
Herb, you and I disagree on some stuff and this is one .. putting the rest of the stuff on an internal drive has its benefits. I just update my internal E:drive and everything works faster, plus I have the external as a backup
/I don't disagree with him wanting the content on an available internal drive //it IS a little more work but has its benefits //it is both possible and beneficial on some systems
I do not work here, but the benefits are still awesome Make your sound your own!
Herb, you and I disagree on some stuff and this is one .. putting the rest of the stuff on an internal drive has its benefits. I just update my internal E:drive and everything works faster, plus I have the external as a backup
/I don't disagree with him wanting the content on an available internal drive //it IS a little more work but has its benefits //it is both possible and beneficial on some systems
Maybe I missed something but I answered based on the assumption the OP has two internal drives. The boot drive is a spinning drive and the other, larger drive, is s SSD. If true, BIAB should run best if it’s all on the internal SSD.
BIAB 2026 Win Audiophile. Software: Fender Studio One 8, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus Quantom HD8 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
Yeah, except my response had nothing to do with SSD or not, I was simply stating having the RTs (and such) on an internal drive, as opposed to external USB drive, has its benefits .. and you still need to do a minimal install to C: regardless The external shipped drive then becomes your backup
Last edited by rharv; 08/03/2406:01 PM.
I do not work here, but the benefits are still awesome Make your sound your own!
I agree having the RealTracks and RealDrums on an internal drive will perform better. I’ve had that setup for ten years. I installed an internal drive just for that.
Your comment raises a question for me. I agree that some files such as the PG fonts do get installed on the boot drive regardless of any other decision. But I think a minimal install can be performed to a drive of your choice. Likewise I know the RealTracks and RealDrums can be on the same or different drive of your choice. Potentially this could involve three different drives.
BIAB 2026 Win Audiophile. Software: Fender Studio One 8, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus Quantom HD8 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
I don't disagree that using an internal HD would be best as far as speed goes. I have a secondary drive that's essentially a storage drive. I could put the files there but I'm not in a big hurry and a couple of seconds is not an inconvenience to me.
But yeah..... with a 2TB secondary internal....there's plenty of room to install the complete program and let it rip.
To the OP: certainly, install the files on the 2TB and roll with it.
You can find my music at: www.herbhartley.com Add nothing that adds nothing to the music. You can make excuses or you can make progress but not both.
The magic you are looking for is in the work you are avoiding.
I agree that some files such as the PG fonts do get installed on the boot drive regardless of any other decision. But I think a minimal install can be performed to a drive of your choice.
Correct - fonts and the plugin are always installed to the system drive, regardless of where you want to install BB. These don't take up much space though, under 1gb.
Originally Posted by Matt Finley
Likewise I know the RealTracks and RealDrums can be on the same or different drive of your choice. Potentially this could involve three different drives.
Four in fact - it's possible to have your system drive contain only the fonts and plugin, a second drive for the BB app, a third for RealTracks, and a fourth for Drums. Not that I'd necessarily suggest doing that though.
Originally Posted by Guitarhacker
a couple of seconds is not an inconvenience to me
Precisely.
In my opinion, I find it easiest and best to have BB and the Realtracks all installed into one location - either install everything to internal, or everything to external. The speed boosts from having the app on internal storage vs USB typically are only noticeable in program launch time - once it's running there isn't much difference (except if you're using USB 2.0 or slower). The downside with having BB/Realtracks/Drums in different locations is that the operating system sometimes changes the mount point for external drives - this isn't a problem if you run everything from the external or internal as BB simply accesses the files from the same folder the app is in, but once they're outside of that folder if the path changes then BB suddenly won't be able to find your RT/RD's.
In practice this doesn't happen that often, but it's happened to me often enough that I prefer everything in one place.
Yes. The way to avoid that last problem is to assign a higher drive letter to the external drive. Mine is drive P (for PG Music).
There's no way to do that on Mac though, which is what GML is using.
The problem on Mac is that drives mount into a folder under /Volumes, such as "/Volumes/Band-in-a-Box". If you plug in two hard drives with the same name, they'll both show up on your desktop and in Finder with the name "Band-in-a-Box", but one will be mounted in "/Volumes/Band-in-a-Box" and the other in "/Volumes/Band-in-a-Box 2". In addition I've noticed this happen without multiple drives, where the OS for some reason doesn't remove the old mount point before the drive is re-mounted.
This isn't nearly as big a problem as on Windows, but still happens often enough.
but one will be mounted in "/Volumes/Band-in-a-Box" and the other in "/Volumes/Band-in-a-Box 2". In addition I've noticed this happen without multiple drives, where the OS for some reason doesn't remove the old mount point before the drive is re-mounted.
Is it feasible to coerce the name using a partition manager or similar? I do that on Linux so I can see what drives are present but not yet mounted.
I just plugged in my 2023 drive and it appears as device "Audiophile" on mount point /media/Audiophile. "Audiophile" is the partition label for my partition /dev/sdd1
Jazz relative beginner, starting at a much older age than was helpful. AVL:MXE Linux; Windows 11 BIAB2026 Audiophile, a bunch of other software. Kawai MP6, Ui24R, Focusrite Saffire Pro40 and Scarletts .
Is it feasible to coerce the name using a partition manager or similar? I do that on Linux so I can see what drives are present but not yet mounted.
I just plugged in my 2023 drive and it appears as device "Audiophile" on mount point /media/Audiophile. "Audiophile" is the partition label for my partition /dev/sdd1
Renaming the drive from the Finder or Disk Utility changes the mount point right away, though I think this was not the case in some older versions of Mac OS. There isn't any way to set the mount point from the GUI, probably only from Terminal.
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