How easy to move DAZ content folder to another internal hardrive or even external hardrive
Dave
Posts: 207
At the moment Daz studio and its content are installed on my C drive with a content of 462Gb. along with a 500Gb vue 2015 installation the drives getting a bit full .One of them could do with being moved either to my other internal hard drive or the new 5TB external hard drive I am about to buy.External drive will be usb 3 and if it would work that would be my first choice. would coppying the content folder over to an external hard drive and then deleting the original on the C drive let me show DAZ the new location and would deleting the content from the C drive leave DAZ always asking where things are?
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asa fas i know, you'd just have to update the link in your content tab
There is a fairly recent discussion of that heer https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/183531/changing-drives/p1
Greetings,
Just as a heads up, if you have any REALLY old scene files (*.daz format), they may not handle it well.
Outside of that, though, anything .duf should be fine. I run my Mac's DAZ Studio instance off an external 2TB drive, and (also on the Mac) my 'Rosity and 'Freebies' Runtimes are on an external SSD. I just moved my 'rosity Runtime on my Windows render box to a new SSD that took over as my C: drive, while most of my DAZ-installed content is on a 1TB (soon to be upgraded to 2TB) D: drive.
It's just a matter of getting comfy with the Content Directory dialog; right click the Content Directory tab, and choose...something like 'Content Directory Manager', and you'll remove the old, and add the new path for each of DAZ Studio content and Poser content.
-- Morgan
Many thanks for the help
finally round to giving this a go , if i move my entire Daz studio directory to the new hard drive and tell daz studio where its gone is it possible to leave the original on the c drive for a while but stop Daz studio looking for it just to give me time to check that all is working well with the move?
I have multiple libraries on different drives; issues are rare, and relate to old scene files. My main drive has about 25 libraries.
Another solution is to create symbolic links, so DS will think everything is on C:, while in fact they are spread out across different drives. I think this gives the most flexibility.
Really? Why? You can list all paths within Studio.
I like to keep everything nice and tidy, and not have to worry about what's on which drive when making backups, or moving something over to yet another drive.
Yeh Symbolic links are great, they are important in Linux (among other variations), but don't easily form part of Windows, unless that has changed recently. I've used them for years to store settings on a drive other than C; initially I just used for Blender.
If anyone interested, I use: http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/hardlink_shell_extension.html
This is in place of using command line to create the links.
They're part of Windows from Vista and up. Vista, 7, 8, 10. They have been around in Windows for quite a while now. People who don't come from a Linux background may not appreciate these at first, but there's so much you can do with them.
Although Ive moved everything Im unsure how to tell Daz studio where to look for my libary. its on a external drive that has the letter I
Ah ive found how to add it I now have 2 base libaries one on c drive and one on I drive so if i go ahead and delete the base libary on c and delete all those files it should still work fine?
If you are sure the contents of the one on C: is the same as the new one, then yes, that's how it should work.
You have a lot of power at your fingertips. I've been doing this stuff since 1999, and learned a few things. In the days before DIM, I installed everything from scratch. I spent countless hours working on my "Runtime collection." I resisted DIM for several years, but finally decided to make more effective use of my time and energy. I prefer the easiest and fastest way possible now.
I was totally ecstatic when I got my first Mac and wanted to copy my DAZ installations from the PC to the Mac. I was able to just copy from one hard drive to the other. But stop and think about this. I have 17 years of DAZ content. It takes hours to copy these files. I finally decided my DAZ stuff would have its own hard drive. Everything sits on an external 3TB hard drive with room to spare. I install with DIM exclusively now. I might create a new "Runtime collection" for the characters and scenes I create. I often get lost if I have more than one Runtime collection.
PS, I have an external 3TB hard drive that makes a clone backup of my DAZ drive!
This has not seem to have gone too well everything appears to be in place on the new drive but once i removed the original files DAZ cant find them (my stuff is always installed manually) if i point DAZ to each bit on my I drive thats fine and it works but how can I make Daz studio just look in the correct place??
it was all working perfect whilst I had the new base content on drive I and listed in DAZ studio even though I had removed the c base content listing in DAZ but once the original files where deleted it wont work and DAZ is still trying to look on the c Drive
I replied in your other thread here: https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/195051/help-daz-studio-can-not-find-moved-content
Not to zombie-fy an old thread, but, if I do this, will I lose my personalized category organization? That would be a hardship, as I have so much data.
No you should not. I believe you have to import metadata or something along those lines. I've done it a couple times but I'm not by my PC right now. I will try and find the thread when I am back on my computer if no one else chimes in before me.
OK, I think I know the process you mean, I just wasn't sure if relocated breaks that process. Thank you for your help!