Finale Forum

Bear with me. This is a bit complicated, but believe it or not, this is a Finale question.
I've just purchased Finale v25, upgrading from Finale 2014. Before installing it, I'm doing my best to free up a lot of space on my very crowded hard drive. In order to do that, I'm clearing out the contents of a folder marked "windows.old" (a friend put a bunch of duplicate files there while helping me out with my computer yearrrrs ago).
It was so long ago, that my windows folder currently looks very different. So I've been careful. Rather than simply deleting the whole dang thing, I've been going through it one folder at a time to make sure I'm not dumping anything important that I don't have elsewhere.
While doing that, I discovered some truly huge files in Program Data and App Data, associated with Finale 2011. Yes, this is where it gets relevant to this forum. So this is my question:
Would I lose anything important if I deleted them? Should I install Finale v25 first, or is the fact that Finale 2014 is already installed take care of that?

Crossing my fingers that I can simply delete those folders. That would free up a LOT of space on my hard drive.

I'm guessing it will be OK--Finale versions are independent--but move them to the recycle bin and see. If there's a problem, you can undo the delete.

Thanks, but I don't know what kinds of problems might show up, especially since I've got lots of files going back many years. Chances are I'd discover a problem months after I'd emptied the recycle bin --and then it would be much too late

What I would do is buy an inexpensive USB drive and copy these folders/files on to it. That would free up the space on your computer's drive. You can get a 64Gb thumb drive for $15 - better yet, get 2 and you'll have a backup-
https://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Cruzer-F ... humb+drive

Speaking of your computer, how old is it and how big is the hard drive? Maybe it's time to get a new computer. It's hard to imagine a hard drive getting near capacity these days, unless you have an extraordinary number of files or a much older computer.

One thing to keep in mind is that older computer files, including Finale files, can possibly become corrupt over time. This is borne out by the occasional post to these forums where someone asks for help opening an older file that is hopelessly damaged. Maybe it's time to go through your holdings and produce printed archive copies of the most valuable files.

N.

I absolutely would go the external storage device route. But I would get a USB hard drive. Matter of fact get several ! I do Photoshop so I find it necessary to do this. I have four. PS files are huge but Finale files tend to be small. If you got a 2 or 3 TB hard drive, again less than a $100 bucks, you will be set forever.
Then you don't have to wonder or worry about it.