Moving SS to new HDD on same computer

[herbaklez]

I have installed a new 2TB SATA HDD and it has a fresh installation of Windows XP Home. My old 320GB SATA HDD has a buggy, but reasonably functional installation of WIN XP with 4 different Windows User Profiles. SonicStage 4.3 is installed on the old drive sourcing audio from too many folders to keep track of.

I can use the BIOS options to choose which HDD acts as the C:\ boot drive.

Will the instructions from the link below allow me to move all my library content, and maintain all my current permission to transfer files and create CDs and new Minidisc and MP3 Walkman compilations? My originals are mostly imported from Hi-MD recordings, CDs, and WAVs created on my computer.

http://esupport.sony.com/perl/support-info.pl?info_id=169

Do I have to copy the original files across to the new drive, and following the same file architecture? I was hoping to use this as an opportunity to re-organise a lot of my music.

[sfbp]

Not sure; I have never used their backup procedure.

However, the most important thing you can do to your files is to decrypt them immediately whilst they still play properly. If you've done that then you can safely copy the .oma files anywhere and reorganize and re-import them as much as you like.

Decryption requires you to run the Sonic Stage File Conversion Tool. It is recommended that you start it from within Sonic Stage - it appears on the main (central) library display (not trying to look at left or right branches for transfer) on the Tools menu.

As soon as you get into it, and click "Next" (it may take a long time while it finds all your files, a couple of minutes anyway) you will come to a screen whose first TEXT (not the title) says: "Approx time required: nn min" or more likely "Approx time required: nn hours".

On this screen you MUST un-check the box marked "add copy protection". The program will now go through a rather shorter scan of the database before giving you its final estimate of how long it will take to convert. (note that on subsequent runs, the first time estimate will still be very long, mine is up to 40 hours, but the second time estimate may be in minutes).

Now click Next again and it will do its thing. Usually it overestimates time needed, as probably was written when CPU's were a bit slower. Maybe by a factor of 10.

Apologies if you are familiar with all this. But the point is that now the files can be copied and reorganized anywhere you want without losing their playability/exportability. Also you can re import them onto a fresh install of SonicStage 4.3. If you knew all this already, then more apologies.

In addition there is another way of decrypting them after-the-fact which has only just been discovered in the last month. But probably not quite ready for prime time so I won't trumpet too much about that just yet.

Finally, just one point - don't bother to rip from CD to WAV using Sonic Stage. It's fast and useless and the result doesn't transcode down to low bitrates at all well. Currently I rip any CD's to ATRAC Advanced Lossless (takes a while but does a great job) which effectively preserves nearly all the info from a CD whilst being really quick to dump out to an MD. AAL does ***not*** have any encryption, which is another advantage to it. Directly importing WAV files ripped by a reliable ripper (EAC for example) works just fine, however SS has a habit of LOSING the permissions in the database especially when you play the same wave files with some other applications. This requires removing (from the library list) and re-importing the WAV file (i.e. no need to delete it, the rip will be ok and no need to repeat that step).

Hope this helps. Once you have done it, you can experiment with how Sonic Stage views folders from the root of the tree mentioned in Tools->Options->Location to save imported files.

Stephen

[herbaklez]

Hi Stephen,

Thanks for taking the time to reply.

I'm not already familiar with the steps you've outlined. I'll probably give it all a go in the next week or so. I'm only getting brief sessions to do all the work I'm doing.. iTunes is on the agenda for tonight. SS will have to wait, but I'll let you know how it goes.