Is it possible to move Daz studio itself to a portable drive
mightguy15
Posts: 56
I do not have a very good computer. 8 gb of ram and only 250 gb of storage, however it does decently enough rendering iray as long as I stick to few figures and a well lit background.
I recently found out information that when the system runs low on Ram the computer will resort to the extra memory to give rendering a boost. For this reason I bought an external hard drive and I was wondering if rather than having daz on my computer can I put it on the drive instead which has more memory? I have quite a number of DSaz assets, would I have to move them individually to the external drive? Can I move the folders to my external drive or do I have to install Daz from scratch on said drive? Will I be able to transfer all of my assets to the external drive?n Is it even possible to do that?
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Comments
You can esily run DAZ Studio from an external drive. However, given the specs of your computer and the fact that you're not simply opting to increase your memory, I'm going to assume that it's an older model with USB 1 or USB 2 ports, both of which are slower than the internal SATA connections. Also, the majority of external drives are also slower than their internally mounted counterparts... though you do see the slower 5800rpm drives in lower priced systems. Since a system is only as good as its weakest link, the odds are that you'll have more data storage but actually run slower using an typical external drive.
You can move content to the external drive if you update the paths in Content Directory Manager (Edit>Preferences>Content tab) and then tell Install Manager to use the same location (with DIM closed download http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/referenceguide/scripting/api_reference/samples/file_io/install_manager_config/start and drag it into the DS Viewport).
Running a program from an external drive doesn't mean it'll run slower because the HD is connected via USB. All programs, no matter where they are, on the network or wherever, are loaded into your computer's local RAM memory before the operating system runs it. So, I see no speed issues as far as where the program itself is installed.
many years ago when I had a laptop with only 200GB total space with Windows Vista using half of that putting all my programs on an external was my only option and they all worked including DAZ studio, I even installed DS4 on it which was just released then before finally giving up on it and rebooting it with Linux and buying a desktop.
Presuming you mean Studio when you talk about Daz, and not the content tor studio; i also presume you don't mean one of the other programs Daz provide.
You can install it anywhere you like, as already said, it will occupy RAM when running; Windows will use Swap Ram when it runs out of system RAM.
I wouldn't bother though.
The difference comes in when it comes to locating and loading assets, so the key phrase in the original question was "I have quite a number of DSaz assets."
Vista... there was a "fun" operating system. About the only thing good I can say about it is that it did have an option where you could designate a flash drive to be used as additional memory, though it only worked with certain drives. It wasn't as good as "real" memory, but it definitely helped.
I had to use readyboost to do anything on that machine
thank you so much
Whoops, spelling error sorry about that. I meant Daz assets, and nothing at all complicated. I simply had a few morphs and clothing items, materials, and shaders.
I might switch over some day too. I used to be afraid of using externals for gaming too, but every since I switched I hardly notice the difference. Yes loadtimes a slightly longer, but no hickups during gameplay. Wonder if this would work the same for Iray.
It would be nice to be able to install DAZ Studio, DIM, CMS, DAZ scratch temp area, and all DAZ content to a USB 3.0+ SSD drive that you backed up just by copying to another such drive and it be smart enough to ignore the drive letter and if it had Mac & Linux executables also on the same drive so much the better.