seriouslyhot

Q: how to use logic pro on a external hard drive

hi i want to use logic pro on a external hard drive instead of having all the content on my mac how would i do this

Posted on Sep 2, 2016 10:59 PM

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Q: how to use logic pro on a external hard drive

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  • by gen_,

    gen_ gen_ Sep 3, 2016 4:51 AM in response to seriouslyhot
    Level 2 (362 points)
    Audio
    Sep 3, 2016 4:51 AM in response to seriouslyhot

    Moving Logic X to another drive is easy. Just drag and drop the App from your Applications folder. Moving the content however, is significantly harder, and fragile enough for me to recommend against it.

     

    I will not detail the exact instructions to do so as I believe you need a certain level of understanding of what you are doing else you can seriously break stuff.

     

    Firstly you need to download the entire content packages that you wish to have, as you will lose the ability to download more (in fact it is of the utmost importance that Logic X never tries to download any more). I recommend getting them all.

     

    Then you need to copy from the relative sample and loop folders in Library>Application Support and the Audio Music Apps folders to your new locations, retaining folder arrangement as far as everything that is in the source folders.

     

    Then you need to go into terminal, and create a Symlink from the original location of each of those folders. A symlink is like a shortcut, but written in at the BSD level. This means that most OS X programs cannot tell a symlink from the original folder and do not know they are tunnelling through the link.

     

    Why does my explanation sound so vague and lingo-intense? Well, if your drive isn't plugged in every time Logic is opened, Logic will break the symlinks. If you open a file and it needs a EXS instrument that isn't in your library, Logic will break the symlinks trying to download it. Update with new sounds? Same. Try to save your own loop to logic library... you better use Save As and put it in the right place yourself without using the symlink... just in case. And assuming you want to do this, you probably won't have the space on your main drive to download Logic libs again should anything on that drive get corrupted or need refreshing, or worse, the drive kicks the bucket, and you cannot download to anywhere else, such is the nature of the App Store and it's Apps.

     

    Essentially, every and any time Logic tries to actually download or change anything to do with that library, you can and will (accidentally) turn the symlink into a folder with the new content and changes and require re-symlinking.

  • by kerochan,

    kerochan kerochan Sep 3, 2016 5:36 AM in response to gen_
    Level 1 (58 points)
    Audio
    Sep 3, 2016 5:36 AM in response to gen_

    seriouslyhot hi

    I understand what you are saying, however:

    Usually, the thing to do is keep Logic on your computer and run it from there, but save all your logic sessions/projects on an external drive.