Can I Delete Old Installers in IK Product Manager Folder?

[babz]

Can I delete the old Mac .dmg installers that are located in Macintosh HD/Documents/User Name/Users/IK Multimedia/IK Product Manager folder?

Background: I was doing some updating using the IK Product Manager, downloading the new "Lost String Quartet" sounds for Sampletron 2, and when I clicked on the Download button nothing seemed to be happening. I did a search on my HD and found the "SampleTron_2_The_Lost_String_Quartet_Sound_Content.dmg" installer was in the directory mentioned above (ie., the IK Product Manager folder). I double-clicked on the installer and it installed the sounds.

But then, much to my surprise/horror, I discovered that ALL my old installers are located in this IK Product Manager folder, including earlier versions of the programs. 59 GB of data!

My questions :

1. Can I delete these old installers and reclaim my 59 GB of disk space?
2. If yes, why doesn't the Product Manager do this for your automatically?

IK can you please advise?

Thanks!

P.S.

3. Less important, but why didn't the Product Manager launch and download the additional Sampletron sound content like it was supposed to? Is this a bug? Why did I have to go hunting around my HD to find the installer and do it manually?

[babz]

Look at this! It looks like insane amounts of space being taken up by what looks like old installers that have already served their purpose. [mod redacted - unnecessary]

[DarkStar]

A1: Yes, but I would back them up first to an archive disk. I believe that the .dmg files include an uninstaller. And, if you ever need to install the Sounds Libraries again, then you will not need to download them again or, possibly incur a Downloads Reactivation fee.

A2: Deletion is not automatic so you have the chance to back up the files, re-run the install etc. (You may recall the complaints about N***** A***** deleting the download files after installation, so users had to use some trickery to get hold of the downloads.)

[babz]

Thanks for your reply, DarkStar.

I've not seen any other company that downloads software installers to a deeply nested folder like this. Usually they go to the macOS Downloads folder where it is easy to see and make a decision to keep or delete. All my other Product Managers either delete the installer automatically or ask you if you want to keep it.

[babz]

OK, so I did some deeper digging and it seems there is actually an IK Product Manager Manual (who knew, much less read it! .. but I digress). And it does actually mention this folder where the installers end up.



What is confusing is some imprecise use of terminology here. The manual says:

" By default, the built-in download manager will download all software content in the following user folder:
/Documents/IK Multimedia/IK Product Manager "

But what they are calling "software content" here is actually the INSTALLER. The actual samples (.pak files) get installed in Users/Shared/IK Multimedia. (And my folder here is over 300GB). And of course the stand alone applications get installed in the macOS Application folder, and the plugins (AU/VST) get installed in the standard location in the System/Library.

Next comes the question, of these installers, what can you delete and what should you keep or back up?

I believe the answer is that you really only need to keep or back up the installers that say "samples" or "sound content". The application software installers don't expire and can be installed, reinstalled, updated, and authorized any time from the Product Manager application.

There are three tabs in the Product Manager: Software, Sounds, and Hardware. If you click on the Sounds tab, you can see what expires and how many days you have remaining in the 180-day period:



This is the stuff that you may want to back up to avoid a possible redownload fee after 180 days.

For example, this week I added new content to Sampletron, so I would want to back up the "SampleTron_2_The_Lost_String_Quartet_Sound_Content.dmg" file.

Beyond that, I believe one can delete all of these installers. You can always redownload them again through the Product Manager.

I'm pretty sure I've now got all this sorted (but would love to get hard confirmation of these details from IK. Does anyone from IK read and reply on this forum?).

I hope this information is useful to other users.

[DarkStar]

NB: The download files for the software products on OSX also include uninstallers. So you might want to keep those too.

(On Windows, the software product installer also installs the product uninstaller.)