There's been something I've thought about off and on since I got my first Vocaloid: what do you do if the hard drive crashes?
All things eventually break, and if your hard drive crashes and has to be replaced (meaning you re-install the operating system and all your software--essentially get a new computer), are you really just out of luck and have to re-buy all your Vocaloid stuff? Is there maybe some web page where you can deactivate your software?
If that's the case, I'm interested in people's thoughts about how to avoid that problem. I'm not even sure if picking to activate with the network card would make a difference--if your HD got wiped out, and there is something on your computer that tells the software that it's activated, you might need to activate again anyway in order to get that file again. I guess maybe at that point you could deactivate (which I guess you could do, since the network card would still be the same) and then reactivate to get the file again...provided it doesn't have an issue with that file not being there during deactivation.
Of course, network cards sometimes go bad, too. Not sure if they fail more/less often than hard drives, though.
Thoughts?
As everyone probably knows (and provided I understood/remember everything correctly), when you activate a Vocaloid, you get a choice of a piece of hardware on your computer to associate it with--some physical thing with what I assume is a unique ID number. By default, that thing is your hard drive, but you can pick other things, like your network card, to use instead. When you activate, that ID gets sent somewhere, probably along with an ID for your Vocaloid installation. I assume something is also sent back to your computer to tell it "You're activated," since you don't need an internet connection to run the software.
The purpose of the above, I assume, is to prevent someone else from getting your Vocaloid installation files and installing your 'loid a second time. It ensures they have to buy their own copy.
And, in the instructions, as I'm sure everyone's seen, they're really clear that, if you're going to switch computers, be sure to deactivate your Vocaloid first.
So far so good, as long as you remember to deactivate before getting rid of your old machine. But what happens if something outside your control goes wrong?
The purpose of the above, I assume, is to prevent someone else from getting your Vocaloid installation files and installing your 'loid a second time. It ensures they have to buy their own copy.
And, in the instructions, as I'm sure everyone's seen, they're really clear that, if you're going to switch computers, be sure to deactivate your Vocaloid first.
So far so good, as long as you remember to deactivate before getting rid of your old machine. But what happens if something outside your control goes wrong?
All things eventually break, and if your hard drive crashes and has to be replaced (meaning you re-install the operating system and all your software--essentially get a new computer), are you really just out of luck and have to re-buy all your Vocaloid stuff? Is there maybe some web page where you can deactivate your software?
If that's the case, I'm interested in people's thoughts about how to avoid that problem. I'm not even sure if picking to activate with the network card would make a difference--if your HD got wiped out, and there is something on your computer that tells the software that it's activated, you might need to activate again anyway in order to get that file again. I guess maybe at that point you could deactivate (which I guess you could do, since the network card would still be the same) and then reactivate to get the file again...provided it doesn't have an issue with that file not being there during deactivation.
Of course, network cards sometimes go bad, too. Not sure if they fail more/less often than hard drives, though.
Thoughts?