I am getting an error every time I try and install the sound library onto my external drive in logic - that used to have the sound library on before. I’ve tried the security settings and deleting the library and reinstalling several times - I deleted the library folder before on the external drive just by dropping it into the trash so maybe there are some residual symlinks? PLEASE HELP!
MacBook Pro 15″, OS X 10.11
The symlinks to your sound library are here:
/Library/Application Support/GarageBand
/Library/Application Support/Logic
If they are broken, then the corresponding folders aren't in their expected location.
To find out where the symlinks were originally pointing to, type in Terminal:
readlink
… + whitespace and drag & drop the symlink from Finder into the Terminal window, press Enter.
You can put the two sound library folders to any location you want, then simply replace the two aforementioned symlinks with fresh ones:
ln -s /path/to/your/new/location/GarageBand/ /Library/Application Support/
ln -s /path/to/your/new/location/Logic/ /Library/Application Support/
Instead of typing the paths, you can again simply drag & drop the source and the destionation folders into the Terminal window.
I, for one, am keeping my sound library on a disk image sparse bundle on a larger partition. The disk image is in my login items to mount the volume automatically, but with the "chflags hidden" flag which makes the disk image volume invisible in Finder, thus out of my way. I can still open it by following the symlinks. Or by cmd-shift-. to see invisible files in Finder.
The best of all, you can also manually relocate any other huge library folders like /Library/Audio/Apple Loops etc.
You can even "outsource" the Logic Pro X.app itself by using the symlink magic! See https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252212720?answerId=254201988022#254201988022
(My Catalina partition is only 64 GB and I wanted to install Xcode on it as well, so I had to make a LOT of free space. In fact, I have then outsourced the Xcode.app with its whopping 33 GB size via symlink, too, haha…)
That all said, you should only proceed with such tricks if you know what you are doing, and after making a backup first. Things can break easily if you're not careful.
The symlinks to your sound library are here:
/Library/Application Support/GarageBand
/Library/Application Support/Logic
If they are broken, then the corresponding folders aren't in their expected location.
To find out where the symlinks were originally pointing to, type in Terminal:
readlink
… + whitespace and drag & drop the symlink from Finder into the Terminal window, press Enter.
You can put the two sound library folders to any location you want, then simply replace the two aforementioned symlinks with fresh ones:
ln -s /path/to/your/new/location/GarageBand/ /Library/Application Support/
ln -s /path/to/your/new/location/Logic/ /Library/Application Support/
Instead of typing the paths, you can again simply drag & drop the source and the destionation folders into the Terminal window.
I, for one, am keeping my sound library on a disk image sparse bundle on a larger partition. The disk image is in my login items to mount the volume automatically, but with the "chflags hidden" flag which makes the disk image volume invisible in Finder, thus out of my way. I can still open it by following the symlinks. Or by cmd-shift-. to see invisible files in Finder.
The best of all, you can also manually relocate any other huge library folders like /Library/Audio/Apple Loops etc.
You can even "outsource" the Logic Pro X.app itself by using the symlink magic! See https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252212720?answerId=254201988022#254201988022
(My Catalina partition is only 64 GB and I wanted to install Xcode on it as well, so I had to make a LOT of free space. In fact, I have then outsourced the Xcode.app with its whopping 33 GB size via symlink, too, haha…)
That all said, you should only proceed with such tricks if you know what you are doing, and after making a backup first. Things can break easily if you're not careful.
In your initial post it says "MacBook Pro 15″, OS X 10.11".
If so, Logic 10.3.3 for El Capitan doesn't even have the Relocate function yet. You'd have to relocate any of those library folders manually, creating symlinks yourself. Which MacOS and Logic version are you using.
As far as your drive is concerned, it's possible that Logic doesn't have sufficient write permissions to use this drive. Or that it hasn't been formated as HFS+ Journaled. Select the drive icon in finder and press Command-I to open it's Info window. There you can see the details. Or launch Disk Utility where you can look up detail about the drive format, too.
YESSS We have an answer. someone on another thread suggested this and its the simplest best solution! Start in Safe mode (holding shift) and open logic and move the library - and it works! - there is another way that uses symlinks etc which also works but its not as clean and logic still thinks your library is on your HD so it gets confused with space etc - this works 100% going to email apple guy now and tell him.
Ok thanks so much for this but I may be being dumb... how do I solve my issue of not being able to install my sound library onto an external hard drive (please)? Do I manually move the sound library and then manually create the symlinks? Or is there a better way that means logic will still install all new sounds etc into the new drive? (Like before when I was using the in app relocate sound library)? Thanks so much
Ahh thank you my bad that’s just as I hadn’t updated my details - using big sur and latest logic etc. Sorry. Was using the drive fine before (and another one before that - both formatted correctly etc) I just tried using a more portable drive for something and then going back to this one but now neither will let me relocate onto the drive and so just have my essentials installed on my HD but no way of moving them to another drive as logic wont let me anymore (even though there’s no sound library on the drives) - thank you and sorry for confusion
Oh, the Bug Sur… ;)
I'm afraid I can't help you much then, lacking a Mac that can run it, and having no plans to change that anytime soon…
In other words, I'd suspect this being an issue somehow related to Big Sur, if it has worked before.
Still, you always have the option to relocate the sound library manually. If done correctly, it should work.
I have and am still speaking to them - they say that the engineers are aware of the issue and that there are various of us with the same problem. They don’t know when it will be resolved however... fingers crossed soon as it is getting frustrating... probably worth contacting them too yourself as the more who bring it to their attention the better.
Haha ok thank you very much anyway and I’ll have a go with your notes on symlinks etc. Will probably call Apple....
Did you ever contact apple about this issue? Did you get an answer resolving your issue? I am also encountering the same...
Great! Thanx fir the update. Good luck.
Awesome! I spend hours on the internet trying to find a solution and nothing quite worked out.
This totally fixed the issue I was having with the Sound Library, thank you so much for sharing!
Sound library external drive issue
