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Need to replace C drive where I have Daz installed... how to transfer Daz to new drive?

heisdaveheisdave Posts: 130
in The Commons

Hi, Daz is installed on my Main Drive, the C drive, the drive that windows is on. I have installed tons of assets, most are free assets that I found on the web and were installed manually (with me coping file contents into the daz directory.)

I want to replace my C drive with a new ssd drive.   Is there any way to transfer my current daz installation onto the new drive ?  The though of a fresh installation of DaZ and then trying to find/reinstall all of the assets is terribly daunting. Is there a good solution? Thanks!

Comments

  • IceDragonArtIceDragonArt Posts: 12,972

    You can move it all to an external drive - I have all of my content (which is quite a lot) on an external 4GB drive.  I also have it on a second one as back up.  This would free up a lot of space and memory on your new SSD drive.  And its pretty straight forward, you would just drag and drop everything to the new drive.

  • diogenese19348diogenese19348 Posts: 936

    The content you can move anywhere you want.  You need to edit the library location in both DAZ and the DIM so it puts new content there.  You can also download the installation files DIM uses to intall the products anywher you want too.  I tend to keep all that stuff off my c:  I also keep things I have bought at DAZ in a separate library from items I bought anywhere else.  It helps to debug problems in the gene pool for Geneesis family items.

  • 3anson3anson Posts: 314

    not a good idea to put your content libraries on your SSD C Drive, copy your content library to either a second internal or an external drive.

    when you reinstall DS on the new drive, just point DS to where the Content Library liveswink

  • kenshaw011267kenshaw011267 Posts: 3,805

    Also since you're creating a new boot drive and likely don't want to lose your entire user directory you should look into a good disk clone utility. It will let you clone the old HDD onto the SSD the good ones will let you pick and choose what gets moved.

  • kyoto kidkyoto kid Posts: 42,161
    edited November 2018

    ...I've always had my content library/runtime on a second drive.and just use the smaller as the boot/application drive.  I have a new 240 GB SSD on the way myself for the workstation to replace the older 256 GB HDD with so it will boot up faster.

    Performing a clean install of the main Daz programme isn't a big deal, just make sure it "sees where your libraries are. 

    Sadly I have the daunting task of having to rebuild my Library and custom runtime structure as last month as the HDD they were on crashed and is totally unrecoverable.  

     

    Post edited by kyoto kid on
  • Subtropic PixelSubtropic Pixel Posts: 2,389

    Why not use your backup methodology?  This works well, and also serves as an excellent way to make sure that you really are creating good and usable backups, so that when disaster strikes (and it always does), you won't have that "oh defacation!" moment when you learn that your critical partitions haven't been getting backed up.

    1. Before you begin, take a fresh full backup.  I use Macrium:Reflect, and I highly recommend it.  Better yet, take two full backups; one to your first backup drive, and another to your second backup drive.  You do have at least three backup drives, yes?  Be sure that your backup utility includes all partitions on that hard drive.
    2. Ensure that you have your backup utility on a removable, bootable media (drive stick, DVD, or another SSD/HDD).
    3. Ensure that your computer can actually boot from the removable media, and that it can read your backup files from your backup media drive.
    4. Shut down, shed your static electricity, then remove the old drive and install the new drive into your computer.
    5. Boot to the removable media drive and perform a restore to the new drive, using the backup you just now created.  Be sure to restore ALL partitions to the new drive, including your system partition which will contain the bootstrap information for your computer.
    6. If you have multiple partitions, review your partition sizes and adjust accordingly.  I use Acronis Disk Director, but there are others.
    7. Confirm that your hard drives will still be backed up by your backup utility.  Sometimes after swapping hard drives, your backups will stop working, or they will back up the wrong partitions.  You can test this by...

               7a.  ...Backing up your system (now running on the new drive) to your THIRD backup media.

    What you have at the end of this process:

    • Your new, bigger hard drive which is running your system.
    • Your old hard drive (or SSD).  If you have anything sensitive or important on your system, I recommend putting the old drive on a shelf for at least a month.
    • Two backups of your old hard drive.  These will eventually be replaced by newer backups as you rotate those drives over time.
    • One backup of your new hard drive.  This will also be replaced by your regular rotation habits.
    • A valid and TESTED backup strategy!
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