Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2024 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
I just figured that out.
However, product updates are not that often, and my workaround - see above - is still better than to wait 10 minutes every time I start DIM for it to react.
.
I tried write protecting the dsx files before running DIM the first time after boot, took at least a couple of minutes before it was ready. Afterwards it took 45 seconds with write enabled and 30 with read-only. Caching generally makes file operations much faster when you repeat them after you've done them the first time so you have to take that into consideration when making such tests. For example, making the dsx files read-only the first time took a couple of minutes, after that it only took a few seconds each time to change the attribute. Just changing the attribute before running DIM the first time may also make DIM load faster, for the same reason.
I wrote a small app (windows) for easy changing of dsx attributes for testing this, if anyone wants to experiment with it it can be downloaded here:
https://3dcontentmanagers.com/software/freeware/dsx-attr/ChangeDsxReadOnlyAttribute.zip
AV test: https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/a4d1a8342f2dce7f4fbe30011b021020075653c034e87e0314b1317ff5800701/detection
Thanks for the tool, Taoz.
My problem was or is that DIM always stresses my HDD for around 10 minutes and longer, not only the first time.
Thus, quickly downloading a new asset for installation, or making changes to the installed assets, in general, was not possible. I always had to wait, while my HDD made dying sounds.
I have around 10.000 entries listed in DIM, as it counts every installation package, and sadly, DIM recreates every single .dsx file every time I start it.
That are too many unneeded and noisy writing circles for my taste.
Now, my DIM starts in around 30 seconds.
As soon as I finish my current project, I will test your tool - and look into your other tools I just found by means of your signature link. Thanks again for them.
Check the properties on the drive - what format does it show for the file system? NTFS, or exFAT? NTFS will use a 4K cluster size, so each dsx file will actually eat 4K. ExFAT on your drive will use a 32K cluster, requiring rewriting 32K for every dsx file.
I ran into this on my system - my DIM startup time with my nearly15,000 items was bugging me so I replaced my 4TB USB drive with a 4TB USB SSD drive (not cheap!) and DIM started failing miserably. That's when I checked and saw the format was exFAT; I did a quick format to NTFS, ran the 18-hour copy to move my files again - and now DIM fires up in less than a minute.
(Back when I was a sysadmin, this process was known as 'throwing money at the bottlenecks')
I'm not quite sure having a drive almost full to the brim is a good idea.
I missed that - a rule of thumb on SSD drives (and NVME are SSD) is to keep something around 10% free space (there's an old suggestion of 25%, but that was in 2012 and newer drives actually have a greater capacity than they show). Any less and they start slowing up.
You're welcome. I'll do some more testing when I get the time, this can be a time saver if it makes such a difference (I have over 17.000 items myself so DIM is really slow here). The best solution of course would be if DIM had a "don't check for updates" option where it skipped scanning the files completely, so you could decide yourself when to check for updates. Even if they're read-only it will probably still (unless it checks the read/write attribute as the first thing) process them partly and just skip rewriting them because it can't.
To clarify, I have two drives.
The one with my installed library for DAZ is on that NVMe (2TB), and it is in NTFS files format. The other one is an external HDD (8 TB) in the NTFS files format and only stores the asset packages and thumbnail files.
The latter one is where DIM writes the .dsx files as they are stored in DIM's download folder. And yes, I do not delete them after installation.
And while my NVMe has less than 1 GB free of storage, this is not the one where DIM constantly recreates the .dsx-files.
I have my Downloads folder on a HDD too though the hardware is generally pretty old so not the fastest. I do get mixed results though when testing this, probably because of other processes interfering.
...haven't seen this for a bit, but getting download failures on several products. Have plenty of room on the drive where the download folder is, so that's not it. Connection is fine so that's not it (I wouldn be able to make this post if it there wa an issue). Everything else downloaded fine except the following:
Oberon Station DS
Medieval Inspired Floor Tile Shaders 3
Sci Fi Antenna DS
Desolation Earth Gator Joe Swamp Boat
Cannot even download each one individually, even closed and restarted the IM but still getting failures on these prodicts.
Try again after a few hours or even the next day. I had problems with a download yesterday, no problem today.
...that worked for the others, but Oberon Station still refiuses to download.
I was trying to get a good download of an update for Harper HD, who had an update on 21 Oct 2020 and after that, the 'Actor' disappeared. The files are in files included, but don't show in Content Library or Smart Content. Found that out this morning. Tried uninstalling and when I went to reinstall in DIM, file failed to download repeated times.
This is the second character where an update has removed a character/actor from the front facing files. Has anyone seen this? The other one was a older G8M character I bought, that folks posted renders of in the gallery, but when I got him, no actor. Before Daz customer service responded, I managed to delete & reinstall him enough to bring his character/actor to the front.
Edit to add: I managed to get it to download, but no luck on getting the Actor to show up. Time for customer service report.
Why did Daz again take away the option to install via DIM after we make a purchase?
DazCentral is awful. I don't want to use it. Stop trying to make DazCentral happen and let us use DIM.
This is a side effect of the new store software - I think it will be brought back, but maybe you should post the problem here:
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/446771/a-new-store-will-come-out-tomorrow-2020-11-01#latest
If you go to "My Account\Product library", you find the links for DIM and Manual download
Thanks. But what I want was the automatic download filter that happened previously.
Apologies if this has been covered in another thread but I can't see it. The 'Ready to Download' section of my DIM is curently blank. Is this a known issue? I don't want to raise a ticket if so as they are probably inundated.
The store was offline as they performed some updates, which included downloads.
Appreciate that but the store is back up and my DIM is currently as stated above. Is anyone able to download products via DIM at the moment?
Nope, the store is up, but several things (including DIM) are wonky, very wonky ... see this thread: https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/446771/a-new-store-will-come-out-tomorrow-2020-11-01/p1
Thanks, appreciate the confirmation. Checked the usual threads, and that one, but didn't see the DIM issue mentioned amongst all the other stuff going on. I'm leaving it for today and I'll do other things, try again tomorrow.
I updated and downloaded items earlier this morning . I'm in the UK.
Thanks for the info. I'm in the UK too. It is now 3am local time and my DIM is still not populated with any downloads. From information in another thread it appears that this is only affecting some users and not others. I'll give it a while longer as I'm not sure raising a ticket will do anything right now.
Exact same problem for me.
I had the latest release of DIM, and after my purchase, it still showed zero items to download, so I did an fresh download, and install, but, no joy, still no items to download. I have never downloaded manually something I have purchased from Daz. If I try it, and I am not even sure I know how, will it cause problems further down the road with DIM knowing what I have installed?
You can manually download a product and put it in your DIM downloads folder. DIM will see it after you have started it and you can use DIM to install it.
Thank you DoctorJellybean!
Yeah, my stuff is blank as well.
(UPDATE): Did a reboot and now it works fine.
My DIM started working again as of 12.00 noon UK time. Thank you to whoever burned the midnight oil to get it fixed.