Just curious if there are any benefits or caveats to defragging an hdd that holds only the sample libraries?

I would like to transfer my sample libraries from a WD black to an ssd and didn't know if I should defrag the hdd prior to making the transfer.

Also curious as to whether I need to clone the drive or just copy the sample libraries over to the new ssd. If cloning will prevent fewer re-auths that is the way I would prefer to go.


Kind regards,
Rick

Since you basically just have "data" on the hard drive (not the operating system, Sonar, etc), the best way is to just copy the files to the new SSD drive.  Copy each folder at a time and that will assemble everything from that folder together in the new drive.  There is no need to defrag the hard drive first as it won't get you anything.

firebird is right about defragging. The process of copying your files from the old to the new drive will cause the OS to re-assemble any fragmented files and then write them sequentially to the new drive.

Cloning (depending on how it is done) might be a worse way of copying the files. A binary/sector copy could preserve some fragmentation from the host drive to the target drive. A simple copy will not do that.

Authorization preservation depends entirely on the method used by the vendor to prevent copying. Most authorization schemes are likely to detect that the samples have taken up residence on a new drive, and require re-authorization, regardless of how they are moved. Your best information for that would come from the vendor (if they are willing to provide that information to you) or from the experience of other users of the specific sample library who have tried a similar move. 

Hi Guys,

I want to thank you both for your help and information. It looks like I will just do the simple copy method as described by fireberd. If I do have to re-auth that is just part of the game when we do an upgrade...

Kind regards,
Rick

If you are copying a large number of files, you may find the following free program useful:

Roadkill's Unstoppable Copier

Windows copy function tends to have problems recovering from an error. The above program can be set to move on (ignore) when a bad file is found, or to retry to recover it the number of times you set it for, and will give you a nice report telling you how many (if any) copy errors occurred at the end of a long process. With Unstoppable Copier it is possible to copy marginal quality files that Windows copy will crash on.