I received my 2020 BIAB Audiophile 2TB portable hard drive a few days ago and due to the volume of the RealTracks on the new drive and the existing volume of them on my computer’s internal hard drive it was not feasible for me to copy them to my internal hard drive so what I plan to do is to erase what is on one of my old BIAB 2TB portable hard drives, copy the contents of the 2020 drive to the old now-blank portable drive, then run the RealTracks directly off the old drive, keeping the new portable drive as a backup. My question is this: what is the most effective and efficient way to make a copy of what is on the 2020 Drive onto the old drive? Should I just copy all the directories and files from new drive to old drive or is there a better way to do that? Thanks.

Make sure there is nothing on your original drive you want to keep. I would either just copy everything over, or just clone the new drive to the old drive (assuming they are the same size).

Be aware that in the root folder of the drive there will be a file called autorun.inf. You will find that your anti-virus (and I think even Windows itself) will not allow you to copy this file over to the other drive. It will flag it, because in the past, autorun.inf files (often in the root of bootable CD's and DVD's to tell the system to run a certain program upon bootup - sort of like an autoexec file for removable media) have been used to propagate viruses and other malware. There is also a hidden file in the root folder that needs to come over also (can't remember the exact name, but I think it's something like autolist.asc, but I may be wrong). If your system doesn't show hidden files, you may not see it to copy, so turn on hidden files to make sure you get it.

I also just copy all the RealTracks and RealDrums each year from my audiophile drive to another drive, then adjust their locations in Preferences, RealTracks and Preferences, RealDrums. These two folders are the ones that take up the most space; others can stay on my SSD boot drive.

And yes, I keep the PG Music-supplied drive as a backup.

I use a utility called Total Commander, which emulates the old Norton Commander, but any way you want to copy the files is fine. Two windows of Explorer would do it, as would a batch file (remember those?).

You will need to run the installer no matter what, as a few system files such as Fonts are installed to your boot drive, no matter what other decisions you may make about the location of files.

I think I'd just copy/over-write as opposed to erasing the original older disk
But that's just me
Erasing it may lose Bonus material from a given year.

/just a thought


Example:
If your previous version included a +Pak or such (only included in that year's version), you may inadvertently lose them.

I used copy-overwrite-verify with some skipping function active with TeraCopy.

However if you have edited RT or Drum WAVs like me, the edits will be overwritten and lost. Alas i forgot to save some drum holds where i corrected an occasional corrected too loud cymbal soaked bong-a-gongs; oops.

Thank you all for your very helpful responses.

You actually edited the RTs themselves, and then saved over the originals?
I would do that on a copy from the git-go .. here I was, trying to prevent data loss, and in your situation my suggestion would have caused it.
That's a pretty unique case/situation.

/on the bright side I'm still learnin' from my mistakes I guess
//thanks for sharing this tip