Digital Art Zone

Hi there,

I use a laptop for my DAZ, and I am getting low on drive space (again).  I am weighing up my options for new storage to add to the machine, and was wondering if I can use an external mass storage device such as a 2TB through USB 2.0?  Would this be too slow a connection for installing the Runtimes on?  I was thinking about when a scene loads it may get slowed down by the USB connection causing a bottleneck?  What do you guys use?  The other option would be a Flash drive but that’s going to fill up fast.  I do have a spare hard drive bay in the HP laptop but this will likely be an expensive option I think?

If Runtime’s are installed on an external drive, and that drive is say, unplugged from the computer, is there a chance the database in DAZ can be corrupted?

Any help would be appreciated!
Thank you,

Mark

While speed may well be an issue there are people storing their content on external devices, even on network drives, so it will work.

I’ve been keeping all of my content on external USB 2.0 500gig hard drive for a few years now. It is a little over half full with my runtime. I don’t notice any slowness, but that is probably because I have almost always used it and I don’t have any comparison on how fast it could be, lol. The best part of keeping your runtime on an external is that you can easily work on different computer if you need to. Just tell DS or Poser the file path to your runtime and it will see it. I plug in/unplug my external with the runtime all the time and have never had any problems. Just make sure it is plugged in before you launch the program or you will not have any content showing.
cheers!

Thank you so much for the replies.  That answers my question very well.  I will use the USB 2.0 external drive that I have.

Mark

I concur with what has been said, I have 65GB of content spread over 20 content folders all on a protable 3.5” HDD. I then backed up all that up on a 2.5” USB powered HDD for good measure.

OK, so if (1)  I’ve already installed Daz on both my desktop and laptop, and (2) I have a lot more stuff installed in the “Studio/My Library” folder on my desktop than on my laptop, assuming that I copy over the contents of “Studio/My Library” to an external HD, how do I tell the Daz Studio installation on my laptop to start looking for content on the external HD instead of the machine’s internal HD?

joea64 - 01 November 2012 10:59 PM

OK, so if (1)  I’ve already installed Daz on both my desktop and laptop, and (2) I have a lot more stuff installed in the “Studio/My Library” folder on my desktop than on my laptop, assuming that I copy over the contents of “Studio/My Library” to an external HD, how do I tell the Daz Studio installation on my laptop to start looking for content on the external HD instead of the machine’s internal HD?

You map the External HD content path(s) into your DS prefs on the Laptop. Thanks to the DUF format as long as your PC can load ALL the content Scene files are now portable.

I hope this helps.

joea64 - 01 November 2012 10:59 PM

OK, so if (1)  I’ve already installed Daz on both my desktop and laptop, and (2) I have a lot more stuff installed in the “Studio/My Library” folder on my desktop than on my laptop, assuming that I copy over the contents of “Studio/My Library” to an external HD, how do I tell the Daz Studio installation on my laptop to start looking for content on the external HD instead of the machine’s internal HD?

Yeah what Jad said. Here is how to do it.

Whilst in the Scene Pane follow the images. When you get in to the Directory Manager just click on Daz Studio Formats and “ADD” your new location, do the same for Poser.

I have not only my 3d content but the actual program itself installed on my external hard drive. It works fine for me sometimes its a bit slow but i think thats just my old laptop in general

Security 16 - 02 November 2012 05:53 AM

I have not only my 3d content but the actual program itself installed on my external hard drive. It works fine for me sometimes its a bit slow but i think thats just my old laptop in general

Wow! Really? I never tried that, putting a whole program on external drive.

Yep a common thing these days with some new workstations. OS goes on to a Solid State Hard Drive and programs on a conventional HDD.

Revisiting this issue because I’m going out of town tomorrow for the Thanksgiving holiday, taking my laptop with me and hope to do some rendering to keep my hand in. I’m planning to basically copy my entire /My Documents/Daz 3D/Studio library, including the Scenes library (containing all the characters and sets I’ve created to date) over to a Western Digital 500GB external drive, as that directory contains virtually all the files I’m likely to be working with. I now know how to tell DS to locate files on an external HD, but here’s my new question: would it cause any significant problems if I copied the aforementioned directory from my external HD to the current /Daz 3D/Studio library on my laptop? I know from previous experience that DS needs the /autoadapted subdirectory, as well as the actual runtime files, to be able to read items I’ve created correctly.