Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Installing Garritan CFX on External Drive

I loaded Garritan cfx on an external ssd drive, then came upon this article after installing:

"It's common to install sample libraries on an external drive in order to save space on your computer. Garritan libraries offer this option during installation. When you are installing the library, you will be given an option to choose which components you'd like to install. The ARIA Player itself must be installed to the computer's hard drive, but you will see an option to select the install location of the samples. Simply click the drop-down menu and choose the location where you'd like to install them.

After installation, the file associations will point to your external drive where the samples are installed.

If you've already moved your sample libraries to a separate drive, you can configure your ARIA Player successfully by following the instructions at Moving your Garritan samples folder after installation."

How do I go about moving Aria player to my main hard drive? Or was it automatically installed on my pc's main drive? How can I tell?

The aria software automatically installs onto your main drive - there's no way to change this, as I recall.

Thanks!

I am not sure that's true. but I am not a 100% on that. I had to install the lite version last week, from vague memory I think it prompted me for three things:

1. Location where the Aria application is installed, this defaulted to Program Files\Garritan\CFX Lite but could be changed at that point browsing to a folder of your choice
2. The VST plugin location, I don't recall the default, but I changed to the usual place I put my 64 bit plugins.
3. The location of the samples which I pointed to another SSD drive

I guess there may be some variant of the installer too, I bought my version as download, not as a boxed version and some of them provide their own packaging method of dealing with the installation instead of a boxed one. I had that experience with ivory anyway.

In any case, I am pretty sure you could just grab the whole CFX app related folder and dump it somewhere else in a folder of choice on another drive, but that may need a little editing here or there .... or none at all. It wouldn't hurt trying as it is easy to do, copy the whole lot over and run it from the new location and see what happens. If not, then the fun begins

Let's say I install Garritan CFX on an external SSD drive, and it's assigned the letter D. I unplug the SSD, and plug in another USB drive, which is assigned the next available letter, D. Then I plug in the original SSD, and it's assigned the letter E. Won't this be a problem with the Garritan CFX on external SSDs? Will I have to change the path in the Aria player, everytime a scenario like this occurs?

There are ways to force an external drive to "sit" on a desired drive letter.
I'd choose a drive letter for the external drive that's never otherwise used, such as Z:
And then check online for a clever script that will "move" the drive from its self-automated D: (or whereever) to the desired, consistent Z:

Not sure if you are in a Mac or PC, but on the former, CFX is not your typical self contained OSX application container, there are a bunch of different directories created throughout the file system and plists pointing good knows where. In order to uninstall it, you have to search the web for instructions on how to find the directories and files to delete and which settings files may need updating.

It was a pain to install it and move only the perspectives I wanted and then uninstall the extra copy I had to make.

I don't think I will get rid of any mic perspectives, I'm sure I can find uses for all of them, and even mix them together in Reaper. Just been contemplating on getting a 500GB SSD some day, put the Garritan CFX on it, and eventually other virtual instruments I'll get in the future.

Probably less of a hassle just to take out the 240GB SSD the Garritan resides on as of now, replace it with the 500GB SSD, when I get it, and use the old 240GB disk as an external one, for VSTis, and other stuff.

Hey everyone. I recently installed Garritan CFX and am having issues with directing the Aria Player (on my computer's HD) to the CFX Samples library (on my external HD). Having followed the Garritan instructions as closely as possible, the process is rather complicated and unclear, and now I can't get any of the samples to connect to Aria Player. Do any of you know how to go about directing the .Plist files to my external drive?

Here is what the Garritan website says to do, however, I have no idea how to code so am at a loss and don't want to mess things up further:

"You can edit the product-specific .plist file to point it to the right location. This task involves editing inside your Mac's preference directory, which contains important data that controls your computer's operation. If you're not familiar with or not comfortable with modifying these files, you may want someone to assist you in person. It's also a good idea to create a backup of the existing .plist file in case you make any mistakes in editing.

Go to Library > Preferences in MacHD (or your hard drive name)
Open the "com.Garritan.[your product].plist" file.

Look through the file for the tag <key>sample_dir</key>. These tags point to the sample directory. You may see one or more of these tags in the plist file.

Change the path between the <string> tags that follow the <key>sample_dir</key> to match the current location of the library's samples folder. Be aware that if you are using an external disk the file path directory must start with /Volumes/ then the location of the samples folder.

Repeat step 4 for each instance of <key>sample_dir</key> in the plist file.
Save the file. Note: You may have to make a copy to save the file, and then replace the old "com.Garritan.[your product].plist" file in the
Preferences folder with the saved duplicate.

Restart your computer and then try loading instruments through the ARIA Player."

After some digging, I did figure out the external drive file path where the samples are located, I'm just not sure how to drop that into the .Plist files.

The file path is /Volumes/Lacie Thunderbolt 2020/CFX_Samples.

Has anyone else experienced this and could you provide a snapshot of exactly how I should proceed. What a pain in the arse! Thanks in advance!

The Aria Player has to be installed on your main hard drive. The libraries can be installed on your external SSD.

It sounds a little complicated but it's really not if you pick a compatible editor.

Open the .plist with an editor that is made for this purpose. Editors like TextEdit will NOT open a .plist with the correct formatting. You can use the free BBEdit or TextWrangler, or PListEdit Pro (by far the best for editing plists, but not free, but might have a useable demo).

Then just look down the list of keys and find <key>sample_dir</key>. Change it's file path to /Volumes/Lacie Thunderbolt 2020/CFX_Samples if the name of your external drive is Lacie Thunderbolt 2020. The path name always start with /Volumes and ends with /CFX_Samples. Save the file. Close it. Open it again and check it was really changed. Restart your computer. It should work.

Then complain to Garritan that this is ridiculous and they should have a simple menu item added to the crappy ARIA Player they use. Don't hold your breath. It's Garritan. It will never happen but you will feel better after complaining.

Thank you Macy! I downloaded BBEdit and loaded the .Plist. I also copied the original code just in case I make a mistake doing this. When you say "Change the file path", do you mean I should delete <key>sample_dir</key> and replace it with /Volumes/Lacie Thunderbolt 2020/CFX_Samples ?

Nevermind Macy! Got it! I left the original file path and inserted my new file path /Volumes/Lacie Thunderbolt 2020/CFX_Samples between the <string> tags that follow the <key>sample_dir</key> as Garritan suggested. Thank you so much for your help!

Thank you, Macy. I just read your reply, but found the same solution by searching around here and there. Sincerely, Thunderfingers.