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What to Do about Your Vocaloids if Your Hard Drive Crashes?

mobius017

Aspiring ∞ Creator
Apr 8, 2018
1,982
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?

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?

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?
 
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Move->Forward

🔹🔷🔹🔷🔹
Mar 25, 2018
253
Vocaloids have more than one activation. I can't remember off the top of my head how many times it was--three? four? five?

So if your hard drive ever crashes, you should be able to reactivate your Vocaloid even if you were unable to deactivate provided that this is your first time.

Deactivating a Vocaloid gives it an "activation back," so to speak, so if you deactivate and reactivate exactly five times, you will still have all of the activations available as you did before.
 

mobius017

Aspiring ∞ Creator
Apr 8, 2018
1,982
Thanks Move! I tried to see if I could find the number of activations allowed, but unfortunately all I could turn up were some pages on Vocaloid.com saying not to switch your HD without deactivating (probably the best was this one, which explains what activation is/how it works). The second page (linked to by the first; you've got to scroll down a bit to "In case you lost your 'Authentication Information'") did say that if you happen to do so, though, Yamaha's customer support can help out, so there's that last failsafe too.
 
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Move->Forward

🔹🔷🔹🔷🔹
Mar 25, 2018
253
You know, that makes me wonder if the number of activations changed for the VOCALOID5 Editor and VOCALOID5 voicebanks. I'm not sure about those ones. Would someone else know?
 

Kona

Avanna's #1 Fan
Apr 8, 2018
813
USA
I have a friend that has used the extra activations of Vocaloid5 without deactivating.

I’m assuming it would remain as three activations (that is indeed the amount of actjvagions given) but someone would need at least 3 computers to test this out if they have a fresh coly of V5 and haven’t used more than one activation.

Also, coming from my memory, I believe you can request more activations from Crypton if you run out of them. I can’t remember if it were through email or a buttom in CFM/Sonicwire itself. But I do remember talk of the feature before back on VocaloidOtaku. Though that reset/three more activations could very well be gone now
 
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mobius017

Aspiring ∞ Creator
Apr 8, 2018
1,982
Thanks Kona!

Thinking about it, I suppose it's possible that getting additional activations could be how Yamaha's customer support helps people who have an unexpected failure. They might prefer to do that, rather than delete the lost activations. That way they at least have a record of which machines you've already used.

Doesn't really matter exactly how they fix it, though, as long as Miku and the gang don't go on a permanent strike. :)
 

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