Upgrading my OS drive in my DAW to a larger SSD drive by Acronis Cloning.
 
I googled the issue and what I read was that cloning "should" copy over the licenses and authorizations, but for me it isnt working.
After the clone I opened a Sonar project and the IK plugs reverted to expired. I do have authorizations left, but I dont want to use them up,plus its a PITA to re-authorize all of them with the cut and paste method.
 
So I havent postedin the IK forum as of yet, but wonder if anyone had similar success or failure with IK,(i havent tried ALL my other plugs yet, there may be more failures)

I cloned my HD to a larger one and I had no problems with IK  or any other plug/softsynth.

I just did this with a Samsung SSD and had no issues whatsoever

Any plugs with hardware based authorisation will have issues, I also cloned to a new SSD and had no issues with IK stuff. I did however have issues with some others. Sonarworks was one from memory

It's not done much anymore, but it used to be common practice to tie licenses to hard drive serial numbers. There just weren't that many uniquely-identifiable components in a computer system to key on back then. That's since been mostly abandoned because nowadays people switch out drives more often than they upgrade computers. Plus most computers have network cards with unique MAC addresses, so that's now the most common piece of hardware to use as a signature. There are problems with that approach, too, e.g. if you want to disable your network for DAW sessions, that'll kill some software licenses.
 
The first time I ever experienced such a problem was with an IKM product. I had to replace a defective motherboard and afterward Amplitube refused to run. Attempts to re-authorize it failed. I was so furious with IKM that I never used Amplitube again. And made it a policy to only purchase software protected by a license file. It's why I use FabFilter and Meldaproduction, not Waves.

bitflipper
The first time I ever experienced such a problem was with an IKM product. I had to replace a defective motherboard and afterward Amplitube refused to run. Attempts to re-authorize it failed. I was so furious with IKM that I never used Amplitube again. And made it a policy to only purchase software protected by a license file. It's why I use FabFilter and Meldaproduction, not Waves.

Reason #1 why I will never, ever touch Cubase or Pro Tools with a ten-foot barge pole, aside from dongles. Serials or universal regkeys (FL Studio!) or bust.
 
Of course I still have EastWest, and I generally make exceptions for iLok machine licenses because I'll likely have enough time to mass deauthorise if hardware fails, but dongles and other hardware-based copy protection can eat many a bag of dicks. Thank God for Nomad Factory, Melda and freeware.

Every time I look at Task Manager and see that Pace service running, I get irritated. Those are my CPU cycles, dammit. Fortunately, the only product I have that uses it is that $1 synth from last month.
 
I still have some Waves stuff - can't bring myself to part with things I paid money for - but I never use them. On three separate occasions, all of my (did I say "my"? so naive...) Waves plugins decided out of the blue that I did not have a valid license and stopped working. Today I better understand how their licensing works and how to recover them, but I am still reluctant to use them.

Just an update I dont know if it had any bearing, but I opened Custom Shop and clicked restore my gear for the three categories and no more problems...
 
now I wish i could fix the plug in scan issue I am having.. if I run PIM the scan box shows up and does its thing, but will disappear, BUT its still running as a process and you cannnot do a thing with the PIM until you end the scan VST process.
 
I dont seem to have the issue if I use the preferences/VST scan

I've had it happen before.  The common cause is the drive size has changed.  I've had no problems reauthorizing IK products. 

kitekrazy1
I've had it happen before.  The common cause is the drive size has changed.  I've had no problems reauthorizing IK products. 

Ohh they re-authorize OK if you have authorizations left thru the manager, just a PITA to copypasta the serial numbers from your account area into the managers dialog box etc. However everything seems to work after i used Custom Shop to refresh my gear.
I had sample tank three in a project initially and it complained about no license. SO I refreshed it in my gear, reloaded the project and ST3 was authorized, BUT, it had to reload all my libraries