Can I remove old GarageBand and iMove support folders?

dmetzcher

dmetzcher

Metzcher.com
I have two folder in /Library/Application Support/ that I think I might be able to get rid of. They are GarageBand and iMove. When I had iLife '05 installed, these folders were needed because they stored the Instrument Library and Templates for GarageBand, and the Themes (I think) for iMovie. When I installed iLife '06, I chose to install all the support files for GarageBand, iMove, and iDVD on an external FireWire drive. The thing is, the iDVD folder that must have been in the above-mentioned directory is gone, but the iMove and GarageBand folders are still there. The iMove folder is empty, so I can't see why I shouldn't delete this (since the support files are on the external drive), but the GarageBand still has everything in it that was there before the upgrade.

Here are the GarageBand files/folders:
in /Library/Application Support/GarageBand/...
Instrument Library (folder) - contains folders: Plug-In Settings, Sampler, and Track Settings
Package Registry.plist (file)
Templates (folder) - contains two files.

The thing is, the "Package Registry.plist" file and the "Templates" folder are not in the new GarageBand support folder on the external drive. Are they still needed on the startup volume? Is the "Instrument Library" folder (which contains a couple additional folders in one of its subfolders that the folder on the external drive does not have - they are in the plugin settings folder.)?

Does someone know if I can get rid of any of the above listed folders (at least the Instrument Library would be a big help)? What about the iMovie folder? Can I delete that one (there's nothing in it)? I need to free up some space, and GarageBand is the largest disk space hog on my machine.

Thanks!
 
As an FYI, I copied the folders to an external drive for safekeeping, and then deleted them from my startup volume. I opened GarageBand, and, though I didn't really do anything with it, I saw that the loops were there, and I received no errors. I tested one of the loops and it played fine. I would still like to know others' thoughts, so please post them here.
 
Correction: Either I'm going nuts, or I didn't actually delete the GarageBand folder from the /Library/Application Support/ directory. It was back again, so, I moved it to the Trash. I got a message from GarageBand that told me it was looking for the Instrument Library folder, but it let me choose the one on the external drive. GB seems to be working with the one on the external drive now...but, it needs that Templates directory...

I'm just going to delete everything that has to do with GarageBand, and then do a reinstall, and see where it puts things this time when I tell it to use the external drive for the support files...
 
I apologize for all these posts. Maybe they'll help someone in the future if they have a similar question. I reinstalled GB and everything seems to be working now, and I managed to save quite a bit of space on my drive. Not sure if it was the fact that I upgraded it before, or if I did something wrong when I upgraded it, but it didn't work out the way that I wanted, and the support files wound up on my startup disk. All the folders that I previously mentioned are back on the startup disk in the same location, but they seem to be empty (the whole GarageBand folder is only about 600KB). The templates work now for everything, but I had to reindex the loops. Then, the loops didn't show up (well, about half of them didn't), so I had to drag them back into the loop browser. OK, that worked. Things look good now, aside from GB being painfully slow at times on my iBook. :)

If anyone has anything to add, I'd be very interested. Thanks.
 
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