HALion 6 content location???

Isn’t there anything more you can remove from your system disk, just temporarily if necessary? Have you run Disk Cleanup with system options selected? Manually empty C:\Users<username>\AppData\Local\Temp, which Disk Cleanup often doesn’t empty very well? Delete any System Restore points?
Or drag over anything possible from C: to D: just for the installation, then back again after? (Including anything large non-Steinberg in Program Files, if nearly all your data are not on the system disk - I imagine no great risk if you don’t touch any programs you’ve moved until you’ve moved them back.)
(Or you could manually copy all the HALion\VST Sound stuff from the decompressed installation folder to D:\ProgramData\Steinberg\HALion\VST Sound before trying installation - the installer might then decide “HALion 5 content” is “Already installed” & not look for as much space?) - EDIT: Sorry, I’ve now tried this & it doesn’t work - the contents of the D:\ProgramData\Steinberg\HALion\VST Sound isn’t quite the same as the final installed set.
Or try installing just the program first; then, on another install run, just the Sonic 2/3 content if needed; then the HALion 5 content on its own?

No I can’t.
I have already checked everything with wizztree.

Sadly I only have an 64 GB SSD as system drive.

All waht you wrote I have tried already but the data is still too much

Hmm … that IS small …
(Will it let you install just the HALion program on its own, with everything else deselected? If the installer still demands 30GB then that’s very poor. But if it will install, it’s possible that if you then copy all the vstsound files from the installer to D:\ProgramData\Steinberg\HALion\VST Sound on your external drive, the program will find them without having to run the installer again?) - EDIT: Now checked, & this doesn’t work.
Incidentally when I say “run the installer” - you probably noticed, but just checking - the first thing it does is decompress the installer, by default to a folder under the installer, & that’ll need about 30GB for the decompression. That should all happen on your external drive/other PC or whatever, but I presume you have got the 30GB free on the drive you’re trying to decompress on?

  1. I was moaning a few days ago about Steinberg prices policy. I bet it was gonna be 100 euros for upgrading from 5 to 6. Bingo. From v1…how much did I spend for halion or Steinberg products…Never a voucher, a fidelity mark or something…Ok it truly shows something important to my eyes…the human factor is NOT considered in that company. Fact. A leader who keeps on not to listen because it can permit it to itself.
  2. I resigned myself as always because it seems my lust for gears wins over price Policy… but I feel somehow…you know…
  3. Instead allowing multiple download or using our own download manager…now we have this monoblok thing…with countless users which gonna be faced with that same problem… I simply can’t install it…because of that supreme illogical way of thinking.
  4. My c drive is a short capacity storage SSD…Uninstalling other components to instal halion is impossible for me…(and why are we forced to dl the whole package from a V5 version…???)
  5. Well…I’m confused. Once more. I keep on scratching my head how to find a clever solution…but This will be a bigger SSD I presume…
  6. I’m a really positive person…in normal times…

Found the solution to this issue in Windows

The Halion 6 content is installed here: Local Disk (C:)/ProgramData/Steinberg/Content/Halion

I cut/copied the Halion folder (Which contains a VST Sound Folder) and pasted it to my sample drive. When I opened Halion and Halion Sonic for the first time, they asked if I wanted to locate the files and, voila, everything works.
Tried doing it with the library manager before doing it manually and it wouldn’t work. Anyway, there you have it, and it works.
Thought I should add that the VST Sound folder under user/AppData only contained shortcuts. The actual files were as I described in the ProgramData folder above.

Jack

This is not a solution.
To do that you have to install the content first first and you can’t do that with only 15 GB free on C:.

Pardon me for not being more specific, and thank you for pointing out the obvious.
I should have been more specific in addressing those that were wondering how to move the content. Sorry about that :smiley:

I was working in Boston today and I’m just getting back to trying to make this work. You can get so lost in these damn folders and subfolders. That last file path mentioned by J L Bowie
(Local Disk C:/ProgramData/Steinberg/Content/Halion) exists. I already have content in there (I assume from HALion 5) so I’m gonna re-install my system drive image from Jan. 30, 2017 and try it again. I have found around 8 GB of stuff from Program Files that I moved to my secondary drive to make sure I’ve got enough room to pull this off, and if it works I’ll just bump them back. I get nervous saturating my SSD. It’s recommended to try to leave about a third of the drive empty for better performance. But before that I gotta find my XANAX!

It took some time for me to finally get the download to finish. Twice it locked up on me, I’d click on ‘pause’ with no response. The only way to shut it down was using ctrl+alt+delete. Anyway, I finally got it to work. Thanks to ‘swhiting’ for pointing out the settings gear in the upper right hand corner. After clicking on it on the left side it says “Storage location for files downloaded by aria2:” then click on the small box just to the right and you’ll be prompted to show where you want the download to go, which should be a folder on a secondary drive. Click on the gear again to get back to the first page. Click on HALion 6, then on the right side click on download. When finished go to the folder you selected for your download and you’ll see 14 large files. Double click on the first one and you’ll get the ‘Welcome to HALion 6’ box. You should have a second folder (also on your secondary drive) for the installer and content files to extract to. (My 2 folders I named ‘HALion 6’ and ‘HALion 6–Content’). In the Welcome box click on ‘Browse’ to select your second folder. I can’t remember each stage but there is one where in the lower left corner there’s a small box that says “Install for anyone who uses this computer (all users)”. I clicked on that box, then clicked next. I think that’s about the time when a small black box (like in the MS-DOS days) running ‘robocopy.exe’ popped up. It goes on for a while and when it’s done you come to the finish line. Click ‘Finish’. Thanks also to ‘J L Bowie’ for cracking ‘The case of the missing HALion 6 Content’.
The path he shows is: Local Disk (C:)/ProgramData/Steinberg/Content/Halion
In my case I had to go a little further:
(C:)/ProgramData/Steinberg/Content/Halion/VST Sound and there I saw 132 content files. I noticed 2 types, VSTSOUND Files and shortcut files to pointing to HALion 5 content. And I checked my C: drive properties. Before I had around 78 GB free of 232 GB. Now it says 56.4 GB free of 232 GB. This convinces me that there’s only one content set on my C: drive.

If you can’t find the Program Data folder it’s one of the hidden folders in Windows. I can’t remember how I got them to show but I know it was through an online search for ‘Windows Hidden Folders’. I just got this from Google:

1 - Right-click the Windows Logo button and choose Open Windows Explorer.
2 - Click Organize and choose Folder and Search Options.
3 - Click the View tab, select Show hidden files and folders and then clear the checkbox for Hide protected system operating files.

If that doesn’t work, keep Googling.

Time for a beer!

Bobby Ryan.

On Windows 10, to locate the hidden folder click “Search Windows” and type:
%PROGRAMDATA%\Steinberg\Content
Any large content files there can be moved as long as they’re replaced with a shortcut of exactly the same name pointing to the new location.

I was quite excited about this new release until I read this thread - I too have a relatively small SSD system drive which will not take this installation without a lot of shuffling.
I have an Audio drive for recording and all my ‘VST Content’ is in a folder on my very large Sampler drive. This means Halion, Groove Agent, all the VST sound files [FCP_SMT_01.vstsound to FCP_SMT_157.vstsound] - everything in one folder - called ‘VST Sound’ funnily enough. I then have numerous other folders with all the other sample libraries I have accumulated over the years. I thought this was the norm and accepted practice. Am I missing something?

Granted, I do sometimes have to make Nuendo look for the ‘missing files’ on installation of new libraries or if I move things, but only the once.

Why we can’t choose where to put this new content at installation puzzles me. Is there a particular reason or is this an unfortunate omission by the programmers? More importantly, will anything be done about it? As things stand I won’t be upgrading as I don’t have the space or the time.

I’m in pretty much the same position and am having a lot of trouble trying to understand where the sounds are stored. I want to update to H6 due to the Live recording features but I don’t have a lot of space left on C: drive. I’ve never really used H5 since I bought it as I found it too complicated and hard to understand, but before updating to H6 I would like to establish exactly where all the sounds are stored and if possible move them all to another drive.

I do have a sample drive (E:) which does contain some Halion samples, but also, in C:\Users\my name\AppData\Roaming\Steinberg\Content\Halion\VST Sound there are a load of Shortcuts which I guess are pointing to the samples on E: drive. I believe there are also other locations on C: drive that contain references to Halion.

How are these Shortcuts created and how can I establish if the samples in the Halion folder on E: drive are all of the samples? - Or will these sounds become redundant when H6 is installed?

If H5 is reading data from E: drive should I remove all references to Halion samples from C: drive?

Confused? - Definitely.

I can’t believe how stupid I was. I was so concerned that 70+ GB of extra C: drive data was there that when I went to the whole procedure again resulting with around 24 GB instead I was releived that I didn’t get the 3X content, the increase meant there was only one content set there. I forgot that the desired goal is to get the content on my secondary drive and not leave one on my C: drive. So, I used True Image to put my system drive back again to Jan. 30, 2017 and carefully went through the whole procedure again. The end result is one set of content on my secondary drive and another set on my C: drive. Before I deleted or moved anything I compared the 2 ‘VST Sound’ folders. They both have 132 files but with a major difference. The one on my C: drive is a mix of VSTSOUND files and shortcut files that point to where my HALion 5 content is. The VST Sound folder on my secondary drive have the actual HALion 5 files, not short cut files. The folder on my system drive has a size of 20.4 GB, but the folder on my secondary drive has a size of 28.9 GB. Right now this is as far as I’ve gotten, gotta leave to pick up my wife. When I get back I’ll try working with the ‘shortcut’ trick that MrSoundman posted.

Bobby Ryan.

Hi Bobby,

I have exactly the same situation. In the C: folder they are mostly shortcut files with occasional .Vstsound files with creation dates later than the shortcut files. How did that happen!

For some reason it is all so complicated.

Why can we not have, in Halion, a simple ‘where is my data?’ button and a simple ‘i want to move my data to’ option. Perhaps they already exist, but they appear to be hidden on the dark side of the moon (the non-more-black interface).

Hi Fenderchris; This is taking a turn towards the bizarre. Using True Image I again got my C: drive back to Jan. 30. 2017. I then did a clean install of HALion 6. At that point, as before it created a VST Sound folder on both drives. Before doing anymore experimenting I did a backup of my current C: drive so if something goes wrong I can get my C: drive back to that clean install. Good thing I did. First I hid my C: drive VST Sound folder and then opened Cubase 9 and launched HALion 6 and what I did didn’t seem to bother it. HALion 6 had 4,904 sounds. So I closed out of Cubase, unhid the VST Sound folder back to it’s original location and hid the VST Sound folder on my secondary drive. I again opened Cubase and launched HALion 6 and there still was no change. It still had 4,904 sounds. At this point the only thing that made sense to me was that it knows of both folders and if it can’t find content in one it’ll just get it from the other. So I closed out of Cubase and re-hid the VST Sound folder on my C: drive, and now there’s no way it should be able to find either of the content folders. I opened Cubase and launched HALion 6 and it was lost. It only had 274 sounds. At least I know there isn’t a third location. So, I closed out of Cubase and fixed both content folders, opened Cubase and launched HALion 6 and it still had only 274 sounds! I’m so glad I made that new C: drive image backup. I just ran True Image and everything is as it was then. HALion 6 shows 4,904 sound. At this point I don’t know what the hell else to try. I’m getting pretty aggravated with this crap. I’m actually gonna start going through the manual and if there’s a way to re-locate content and it actually works I can take a break from this.

The process of getting HALion 6 installed has three stages:

  1. Download everything
  2. Extract the installation files
  3. Install the application and content

N.B. you can already download and prepare the installation files without first buying the license via the
Steinberg Download Assistant
Before you start the download process, click the Settings icon in the top right and select where you want to save to, which can be e.g. an external drive, or other drive where you have lots of space. These are just the installation files in a compressed archive, and for Windows there is one executable and 13 files with a .rar extension – a multi-part, self-extracting WinRAR compressed archive. Be sure to wait until the download has finished completely, i.e. the status bar goes green and the Actions button says Open.

Once you have downloaded all of the files successfully, click the Open button to go to the download location, and then run the first file (for Windows, this is called Halion_6_win.part01.exe), which is a program to extract the content from the .rar files and allows you place them in any location you choose. When you start the the program, you see the following message:

Welcome to HALion 6

In the next step, the installer and content files are extracted to a location on your system.
Due to the space requirements of the content files, the default location specified below might prove too small.
You can click “Browse” to select a different location.
After the installation is complete, you can delete the extracted installer and content files.

In my case I plugged in a USB drive which got the drive letter T: so I chose "T:" as the destination. Even though the status bar says “Installation progress”, it is not actually installing anything, it is simply extracting the actual installation files to the chosen destination.

Extracting files to T:\HALion6 folder
Extracting from Halion_6_win.part02.rar
Extracting from Halion_6_win.part03.rar
Extracting from Halion_6_win.part04.rar
[…]
Extracting from Halion_6_win.part13.rar
Extracting from Halion_6_win.part14.rar

Once extraction has completed, the actual installation program will start, but you can select Cancel at this point if you don’t wish to proceed.

These are the actual installation files and the downloaded files are no longer required.

So, one batch of files is the download (~28GB), one batch of files is created from the download when you run the extractor, and at this point no space needs to have been used on the C: drive at all (except for the Download Assistant, which is small).

To proceed with the installation, click Next, accept the EULA, and click Next again. At this point you must be careful to make the correct choices! You must select each of the items listed on the left in order to be able to make adjustments on the right. In my case, I am upgrading from HALion 5 so my answers are:

HALion 6 – Will be installed; I accept the defaults and the required disk space on C: is 564MB
HALion Sonic 3 – Will be installed; I accept the defaults and the required disk space on C: is 520MB
HALion Sonic 3 Content – Will be installed; only requires 20KB
HALion Sonic 2 Content – Already installed
Generic Lower Latency ASIO Driver 64bit – Will be installed
HALion Library Manager – Will be installed; only requires 11MB
Impulse Responses – Will be updated
HALion 5 Content – Will be updated

The final option is the checkbox at the lower left – “Install for anyone who uses this computer (all users)” – checked!

Once you’re happy, you can then go ahead and install everything, but bear in mind that this WILL replace an already existing HALion 5. If you want to revert, you will either have to restore a previous drive image backup (you did make one before you began, didn’t you?) or uninstall HALion 6 and reinstall HALion 5. Time for a coffee …

When the installation process is complete, you can run the new Library Manager even before you purchase your license. You will see the various component parts of the HALion library, and you can move then to your chosen location; BUT there is no option regarding where to initially install them, so you get everything on C: at first. This means you must have at least 30GB free on C: before you begin the installation process. I did already have my H5 content moved to another drive, and I noticed the H6 installer respected this, so it added/updated there instead of installing everything on the C: drive. It may be different if you’re doing a clean install – I don’t know, perhaps someone in that position can add this information.

Hi MrSoundman; If I’m reading this right, though the content initially is installed on the C: drive you can use the Library Manager to move the H6 content to your chosen location, for me it’d be a folder on my second internal hard drive. I didn’t know there was a Library Manager. I gotta spend more time with the interface. Thanks for your expertise!

Bobby Ryan.

I’m perplexed! I tried one more time to restore my C: drive using True Image and reset the drive back to Jan. 30, 2017. The 3 times before I kept getting the same results with around 20 GB of content on my C: drive that of course I don’t want there. Anyway, for the 4th time I did it and I don’t understand it, but that same content folder this time has 132 files but the size is only 3.26 GB. HALion’s sound list says 4904 sounds/patches. I’ve tried several and everything seems fine. As soon as I post this I’m gonna back up my C: drive to 2 other drives before something fails!
Thanks for everyone’s input!

Bobby Ryan.

Purchased the H5-H6 upgrade yesterday, wish i’d have read this thread first as i wanted to locate the content on a different HD.

WHY can’t you chose the location of content during install? Pretty sure this was possible with previous versions as i have all my H5 content on a different drive.
It’s not a major issue for myself as i still use a large HD for my system drive, i just like to run any sample libraries on a separate HD to spread the load on large projects.

Thought i’d give the content manager a go but it will not let me move the files!!! What is the point of a content manager that won’t allow you to ‘manage’ the content? Very pretty GUI but not really useful :frowning:

Will try moving the files manually later on today for a laugh :unamused:

UPDATE: Ran the content manager in Admin mode and all is good! just me being thick as usual lol… Been using for a few days and REALLY impressed so far… VERY nice update :smiley:

Hi all,

I know this is a topic from last year, but as I decided to move my content from my C:/ drive to a new external SSD, my January 2018 Google search landed me hear (among other places)

Okay, I confess I haven’t read to the end to see if this Steinberg link has already been proposed but for anyone else who stumbles on this forum string as I have, I’ll add my 2 cents. I found this on steinberg.help and it sounds like a possible easy solution:

I plan to move my Halion Symphonic Orchestra content from my C: drive to an external SSD… and found this on help.steinberg - where it sounds pretty simple and applies in general to Halion products. It’s under “Installing VST Sound Libraries” but talks about causing a change in the Media Bays registry just by navigating “to the folder where the new VST Sound container files are located and double-click one of them.” and an automated process registers the location:

https://steinberg.help/halion_sonic_se/v3/en/halion/topics/library_manager/vst_sound_libraries_installing_t.html

on the side bar of this page is also the next topic “Moving Libraries” to check out. Hope this helps.

Happy Music Making!