As an avid backer-upper of my files, I have a folder structure that makes it easy to choose only stuff I want with little maintenance. MG3 keeps wanting to land the vst to ProgramFiles/Steinberg/ which is an ancient and outdated precedent from the 90’s. Worse, the default location for patches is C:\Users\user\AppData\Roaming\JamOrigin\Patches\MIDI Guitar !!
Also, that |JO| folder is where the app seems to be installed. This it really poor practice.
Can we please just set a default location that is simple? Mine is C:\VST\JamOrigin\patches for both.
Thanks!
ETA: these files in that APPDATA folder are not removed on uninstall, either
I have to look into this but if I recall correctly the installer looks in the Windows registry if the Steinberg location has been set (by various DAWs), and then it shows that path as default in the installer, only if it is. But you are given a choice where to install it during installation, so its really just a question of where it suggests to put the VSTs as default.
About the patches folder, yes I guess we can make an option to set the location, and you can store them whereever you want. But mind there is other data files (for example caching data from plugin scanning) and I believe this app data must be stored in %APPDATA%/JamOrigin/. Please enlighten me if that’s not correct.
on my system the app is in program files. only the settings are in the appdata folder.
a quick scan of roaming/appdata shows many music apps, izotope, kontakt, ableton, bluecat, bome and korg, to name a few.
i searched for a best practices doc from microsoft on this, wasn’t able to find one. in my opinion, whatever microsoft’s default is should be mg3’s default. certainly it appears that the vast majority of software vendors are using roaming/appdata.
i’m not against having a custom location option, but i feel it’s a bad idea to go against microsoft, especially with the gargantuan mess aka win11.
backup wise, if you’re not imaging your entire boot drive, you’re not safe. i applaud your efforts to keep the backups manageable, but i think your enemy here is microsoft, not jam origin.
Thanks for the thoughtful replies. I agree best practices should be followed and I agree on the side point of whole-disk backups…but…while I do disk image (“bare metal”) backups, I store and back-up the main contents of things I want to preserve in case of reinstall or building a new pc where the bare-metal backup doesn’t apply. It’s two difference scenarios really. If I reinstall software, I’m not going to my disk clone to restore files, I’m going to my uncompressed backup(s) & NAS.
Anyhow, being able to set a directory within my happy-place folder structure lets me archive my configurations. Pointing to any gazillion of appdata locations is not scalable, and a dubious use of backup disk space.
I hope JO can help me manage the structural difficulties of MS/W11; though neither are my enemy
