How to relocate Daz content on Mac OS?

plj1225

Everytime I try changing install paths with DIM and copy data to match, Studio no longer runs. Just bounces icon a few times and then crashes..

Grumble incoming..

I'm running Sequoia which apparently no longer allows relocating the /Users/Shared folder which is where Daz installs all of it's content (I'm over 600GB of data with just Daz and only a 1TB Macintosh HD.. killing me here..). I've already relocated my home folder to a 4TB NVME, works great.

Why doesn't DIM install data to the ~/ home folder like every other sane Mac app? I mean, if there were multiple users on this box there's no guarantee that installing to shared the additional users have purchased that content. Doesn't seem particularly well thought out, or is this just Mac as a second class citizen syndrome?

All that being said, Daz runs suprisingly well on my Mac Pro 2023, better than it did with my old 13900k/6950 setup. Just having a huge amount of issues trying to manage the data.

Elor

I moved my Daz Library from the internal SSD of my Mac to an external SSD without too much hassle.

First step was copying all the files to the new location, then in DIM, I opened the Basic Settings (top right cog wheel) and changed the Content Base Path.

There is one problem I don't remember the solution (I think Richard Haseltine gave it somewhere but was not able to find it): while everything is working fine inside Daz Studio (both in the Content Library and the Smart Library), when I asked DIM to remove a product I installed before moving everything, it failled to remove all files related to this product. But like I said, there is apparently a solution to that too, to let DIM update whatever element it's using to keep track of the absolute path of where a file is installed.

felis

If using DIM, you need to update the manifest files, else will DIM not know where the content is.

The manifest files tell DIM what is installed and where.

It is a single path in each file that must be updated to the new. It can be batch edited with something like Notepad ++ (I don't know if that exist in Mac environment),

plj1225

A couple days ago I ran into an issue where I had to reset my Mac and I couldn't remember for the life of me how I got this resolved. Fast forward a bit, I finally got this fixed and I just wanted to do a quick post on how I got this working in case 1) I have to do it again, or 2) someone else runs into the same issue.

Simply pointing to new directories in DIM won't work, constant crashes or failed installs. Daz needs to up their Mac DIM game.

Make sure you have a fresh system otherwise you're going to need to temporarily move any data in /Shared out (just move it back when you are done). Install Daz and all of your content. Use the default directories DIM specifies; if you try changing anything neither Daz Studio nor Hexagon will install - no idea why but no amount of sudo trickery will get it going. I think Daz uses some hardcoding here, didn't have these issues under Windows.

I'm not super *nix fluent, there are probably better alternative ways of doing this, but this worked for me.

 

My 4tb nvme is labeled Home, change this to match whatever your drive is named. I used both the Finder and Terminal.

 

//make a Shared folder on your larger drive with terminal
sudo mkdir /Volumes/Home/Shared

//copy Daz Data
use the Finder to copy everything in /Users/Shared to the new /Volumes/Home/Shared folder (im sure there's a unixy way of doing this, i just don't know the command)

//after everything is copied, delete the old /Users/Shared directory
cd /Users
sudo rm -rf Shared

//make the symlink
sudo ln -s /Volumes/Home/Shared /Users/Shared

You've now migrated Shared from the default location to your larger drive. No need to touch DIM. A side benefit is that everything else taking up space in Shared is now on the larger drive freeing up space on the main Mac drive (I'm looking at you Logic Pro library).

 

Richard Haseltine

Is your MacOS filiing system set to be case sensitive?

brainmuffin

I moved all my content to a second SSD on my Mac using the command line and the "ln" command. I copied from the base folders and used "ln -s" to create the links at that level. Didn't have to change a single Studio or IM setting.