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Moving files that were downloaded and installed with DIM

KharmaKharma Posts: 3,214
in The Commons

I have all my DIM files downloaded twice, once to an external WD 2TB drive that I used to use with  my laptop and another set on my desktop internal drive, but not all are reapeated on both HDs  I want to move all my downloads to the same external drive so that I can either plug that into the desktop or laptop to install and uninstall files. If I just copy all the files from my internal to the external does that create a problem with the installed files or is it better to uninstall everything, move all the files already downloaded and then reinstall them from the external?

Sorry if that sounds confusing

Comments

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 108,135

    If you mean the zips that DIM downloads then there is no issue with moving thema round, as long as DIM knows the folder used.

  • barbultbarbult Posts: 26,255

    I tried something like that once, and it didn't work at all for me. It has been a long time, so I don't remember all the details. I think it had something to do with confusion about whether a product had been installed or not on the two different computers. Hopefully someone who has done this successfully will have better info.

  • KharmaKharma Posts: 3,214

    Maybe I will just try it and see what happens!

  • barbultbarbult Posts: 26,255

    Let us know how it goes. 

  • mindsongmindsong Posts: 1,725

    I don't use the CMS/smartdata functions at all (i manually disabled it), but using the old-style content browser, I happily move/rename almost anything I can 'see' in the DS content browser without problems - whether or not I used DIM to install that content. I have no idea if that's OK to do when using 'smart content' and the default DAZ Studio CMS system.

    If you do happen to move your things around, DIM will have no idea that you did so, but won't break. Any DIM un-installations of 'tweaked' packages will complain that not all files were found/removed, but it'll treat the package as if it's been removed (and it'll let you reinstall it). To be sure, a DIM re-install will place new copies (of the things you moved around) back in their original locations, and you'll now have two versions floating around. Both will work, but it may be confusing!

    I never muck with stuff that's under the .../My Library/data/... (or .../Content/data/...) directory, or the .../My Library/Runtime/geometries/... or .../My Library/Runtime/textures/... directories. These are kind of sacred, as most of the end-user/scene files expect things in those folders to not move. There may be some other 'sacred' directories, but I know of those for sure. Othe folks may chime in on that!

    I also let the DIM install my plugins (e.g. decimator, LAMH, etc.) since it may run some pre- or post-processing actions in the program/plugin directories that go beyond a simple extract and copy of the package's files. Other than that I generally leave the program directory folders alone. Some plugins include content/presets as well, and the stuff I mentioned above applies to that content as well.

    hope this helps,

    --ms

  • KharmaKharma Posts: 3,214

    I am just moving the zips DIM downloads from my internal drive to an external drive, and in DIM I will point my download folder to the new drive, hopefully it will still show correctly which files are installed, what needs to be downloaded, and which are pending installs.

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