Backing up and reinstalling content

inspired_art_86a3f09735

Ocassionally I like to reformat and reinstall my system. I was wondering if I download and install my content how would I back it up and reinstall it without having to go through the whole downloading it through the install tab within DS?

Taoz

What's the reason for reformatting and reinstalling?

inspired_art_86a3f09735

Clean system. Getting rid of any malware, viruses, and malware. Making the system more responsive. I've been fortunate enough that I've only had to do it once over the last 2-3 years.

Taoz

inspired_art_86a3f09735 said:

Clean system. Getting rid of any malware, viruses, and malware. Making the system more responsive. I've been fortunate enough that I've only had to do it once over the last 2-3 years.

After reformatting, reinstalling and configuring DS and whatever needs to be configured you could make an image of the freshly installed and clean system, then restoring that image when necessary.  Then you'll be up running again within an hour.

But if you have everything on the system drive the disk image may get pretty large of course.  Personally I therefore only install software on the system drive, and keep all data like DAZ libraries, DIM Manifest files and downloads, DS user data and anything else that can be moved on another drive.  Data only drives are rarely infected (I don't think I've ever seen it happen), and performance problems are usually caused by fragmentation which can be fixed by defragmenting the drive, and maybe a cleanup to remove unnecessary files. 

This way everything will work right away after restoring the system image, all you need is to update your programs to newer versions, and perhaps the CMS, if needed. 

Here's all the DS data I've moved from the system drive to a data drive: