This is a general outline of what to do when you start to get warnings about available hard drive space on your DAW. I'm providing this as there have been some questions about how to defrag your hard drive, what to do when you get available space warnings, and how to address these problems. Several assumptions have to be made though. You have to have optimized your PC for operation as a DAW. You have the appropriate amount of memory and hardware that at least meets the minimum requirements of the DAW package.

Here are some things you can do to take care of the issue.

1. Go to Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Cleanup
2. Select the logical drive on which you store your music projects
3. Select Ok
At this point the machine will start doing an analysis of what you have in files and will prompt you to select the types of files to delete. Be sure to select all the temp files, the Internet Explorer files, log files, installation files that aren’t needed anymore, Error dump files, error reports and internet history files. Don’t check anything that you aren’t sure about. Just note those down and run the clean up without selecting anything you aren’t sure about or have a questions about. You can send us a short list later on and we’ll help you in figuring out what you don’t need. Click ok when you have made the selections. On average I clean out 20 GB of crud from my hard drive monthly (this is a personal observation in my own computing environment doesn't reflect what may be normal for you).

What windows doesn’t show when it calculates available space for a drive is all the crud that occupies space and does nothing after the process of loading the OS and other utilities that run in the background that create log files and temp files as part of their loading process. These files in turn will give you available space warnings when it seems like you should have available space, when in reality these files are there. Manulaly remove any files you feel are irrelevant in your "My Documents" folder as these are not taken into account by Windows as junk files. Essentially get rid of those notes to Johnny's teacher about Johnny being sick and the like. We both know Johnny wasn't sick he was holding the thermometer up to a light bulb and pretending to be sick. In any case get rid of the clutter. Just be careful of what you delete if you think you might need it in the near future.

Next. Back up all of your valuable data and programs to either removable media, optical media or another hard drive. Some manufacturers provide a back up feature or software package as part of the delivered machine some others don’t. Windows Vista shipped with a back up utility in the premium and ultimate editions. I can't remember what I was using on my XP machine but I know I had to go out and buy it. Check and see in either case. After backing up your machine you will want to run the Windows defragmentation program. However let me explain why you want to back up your core programs, sound files and documents. Windows Defrag has been known to corrupt or destroy on files occasion as it moves things around. This is a rare occurrence but if you don’t plan for the worst you will become a victim of it. Murphy will see to it at some point down the road that you loose something critical. Maybe not this occasion but another and you will bemoan the fact that you didn't take the time to back everything up.

Run the Defrag utility.
1. If you haven’t already, disable your screen saver. You do not want this to turn on during the defrag process as most screen savers use a lot of processing power otherwise needed during the defrag process bringing defrag to a grinding hault. You can turn off the Screen saver by going in to the Control Panel, selecting your screen saver and setting it to never. Also disable the sleep mode on the machine as you don’t want it going and turning the machine off during the defrag process. This could be disastrous, just go ask my kids how many times I had them reload their own computers because they turned it off in the middle of doing some type of critical operation.
2. Go to Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Defragmenter
3. Select the appropriate drive and click Ok

Once you have the disk defragmented you should see an improvement in performance and the available disk space errors should go away or at least be minimized. The other thing to do would be of course to save your projects to another disk and moving any finished projects to either hard disk drive archival or optical media archival.

This would be done by taking your projects opening them up and then saving the as Cakewalk Bundle Files (CWB). Transferring these CWB files over to your new drive location. You may want to verify file integrity by opening a bundle after you have moved it. If it populates all the wave files correctly then your transfer was successful. After you have moved and confirmed all your files are moved or copied you can go through and delete any remaining project and audio files in you root directory where you have the files previously saved.

This should free up enough space to make the Computer operate as a DAW without running into resource issues. This is assuming of course that the PC has already been optimized and tuned up for usage as a DAW. Just as a precaution you may want to, in about a weeks time after the initial tune up, run the clean up and defrag process again.

The best alternative all the way around is to have three hard drives, One for the Windows Operating system and software tools, utilities and programs, another for loop sources and other audio files and yet another for all you audio projects.

Edited for spelling and grammatical errors.

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ORIGINAL: Doc_Hollingsworth

dirve, what to do when you get available space warnings, and how to address these problemsSeveral assumptions have to be made though. You have to have optimized your PC for operations as a DAW. You have the appropriate amount of memory and hardware that at least meats the minimum requirements of the DAW package.

I don't know if you should put meat in your pc..

ORIGINAL: Jessie Sammler

Doc, I was about to start screaming for a sticky, when I got a better idea. Why not a sticky thread/post that is a working index of links to the greatest instructional posts in the forum's history? The OP can edit the list to include links for anything new that comes along and is thought worthy, remove things that are not longer relevant, etc. Instead of a huge number of good posts being stickied, the index would be there instead, to put them all within a click for you.

Jessie, I think that's a great idea! Since it's yours would you do the honors of dropping the Cakewalk guys a line? I'd say that Bob's buss and soundcard posts should be included as well as the recent Strummy post on Vista. Any other's you can think of?

ORIGINAL: zeypxun

ORIGINAL: Doc_Hollingsworth

dirve, what to do when you get available space warnings, and how to address these problemsSeveral assumptions have to be made though. You have to have optimized your PC for operations as a DAW. You have the appropriate amount of memory and hardware that at least meats the minimum requirements of the DAW package.

I don't know if you should put meat in your pc..

Z, good catch. I was just typing along and a bit weary. These trips to Europe kill me every time. I can't sleep for s*** and stay awake all night and want to sleep all day. I ought to be doin' gigs out here instead of client relations. Too bad it wouldn't pay as well.

Great stuff Doc, as usual - and great idea Jessie.

If I could suggest one extra thing to ask Cakewalk for, I'd see if they could make the thread editable just by one of us, and not have the 'Reply' option built into it - in other words, it would be essentially locked to everyone else. As these posts increase, the person who can edit the post can add the links.

Guys, I had an idea a while back [which I ran by Bob and Doc] that might help as a make-do until Cakewalk let us have this purpose built thread.

Bearing in mind we already have an editable sticky for Dean Roddey's tutorial - I could ask Dean if he'd be cool with us using it a similar way.

As anyone can still add posts to that sticky, we could add these 'sticky' topics to it and leave a link to anyone interested as part of a reply.

This is how it would work!

If you want me to go ahead and ask Dean, let me know here, or even better, if you get any luck from the Caklewalk guys - stop me in my tracks.

Cheers

Steve

Honestly I think stickies are great, but I think mostly its people like us who see them while noobs never even look around before posting it seems. Plus if someone doesn't know how to handle a disk space problem then I'm pretty sure they should not be using any cakewalk product!! Yes I know a troll supposedly uses it but hopefully we can stop it there! I don't know why you guys worry so much about it. I think we need to worry about a more serious problem. The Space Disc warning! It flies around and giving people a partial lobotomy which causes mild to severe ****ation and will make you think you are really doing things (like recording music) which you are not, but it does enable you to keep typing about it like you really are doing it. Furthermore it creates complex delusions where the subject will think he/she is a professional musician who is in high demand and they will think they know how programs are written and the differences between software and hardware. Yet they only really know how to eat potato chips and wipe the grease onto their shirt.
The evidence that someone is a potential subject is vast and varies between individual subjects, but the most common are:
1- They always post nonsense.
2- They always post the same thing over and over again until most people will think they only learned how to speak 5 - 8 complete sentences.
3- Their online persona appears to be that of a 13 year old boy.

Anyways hopefully this helps too! I gotta go to the store now so my typing time has been cut short!!!!

ORIGINAL: zeypxun

Honestly I think stickies are great, but I think mostly its people like us who see them while noobs never even look around before posting it seems. Plus if someone doesn't know how to handle a disk space problem then I'm pretty sure they should not be using any cakewalk product!! Yes I know a troll supposedly uses it but hopefully we can stop it there! I don't know why you guys worry so much about it. I think we need to worry about a more serious problem. The Space Disc warning! It flies around and giving people a partial lobotomy which causes mild to severe ****ation and will make you think you are really doing things (like recording music) which you are not, but it does enable you to keep typing about it like you really are doing it. Furthermore it creates complex delusions where the subject will think he/she is a professional musician who is in high demand and they will think they know how programs are written and the differences between software and hardware. Yet they only really know how to eat potato chips and wipe the grease onto their shirt.
The evidence that someone is a potential subject is vast and varies between individual subjects, but the most common are:
1- They always post nonsense.
2- They always post the same thing over and over again until most people will think they only learned how to speak 5 - 8 complete sentences.
3- Their online persona appears to be that of a 13 year old boy.

Anyways hopefully this helps too! I gotta go to the store now so my typing time has been cut short!!!!

Clever - very neat Z!

This would have been slightly more accurate though:

The Space Disc warning! It flies around and giving people a partial lobotomy which causes mild to severe ****ation and will make you think you are really doing things (like recording music) which you are not, but it does enable you to keep typing about it like you really are doing it. Furthermore it creates complex delusions where the subject will think he/she is a professional musician who is in high demand and they will think they know how programs are written and the differences between software and hardware. Yet they only really know how to eat potato chips and wipe the grease onto their shirt.



Please proof read your stuff before dashing to the store!

Z,

I have to disagree with you. GTP3 is entry level. I would agree with you if someone were to buy Sonar 7 and not know how to deal with a disk space issue. But this is something I have seen more than once in this forum in the last year. And some noobs are better than others at looking around first before posting.

ORIGINAL: Doc_Hollingsworth

Z,

I have to disagree with you. GTP3 is entry level. I would agree with you if someone were to buy Sonar 7 and not know how to deal with a disk space issue. But this is something I have seen more than once in this forum in the last year. And some noobs are better than others at looking around first before posting.

Point taken here Doc.

But 'entry level' can mean different things to different people - a single prop engined aeroplane will definitetly be considered entry-level to a Stealth Bomber pilot but not to a landlubber like me that gets dizzy stood on the third rung of a ladder.

I believe that Doc posted this tutorial in timely response to my PM'd question about interrupted playback, along with dwindling hard drive space and moving files over to an external hard drive.
He already had it prepared for general help, I believe.
I have never pretended to be an engineer. I am just trying to record my own songs. Any help that I have been given is strongly appreciated.
If I am innappropriate for this forum, please let me know. This is the first inkling that that may be so. I have felt welcomed until now.
Where is a guy supposed to start, apart from going to recording school, which is not feasable with a career under way.
I don't plan to be a rock star so I don't want to pay for the massive studio time that I would no doubt need. I am a hobbiest just wanting to do something myself with my songs. Maybe learn something along the way.
Then again, maybe I have misunderstood Z's post?