Hard Drive full. Advice wanted
Riggswolfe
Posts: 914
Alright, so my 4tb Daz SSD is now full.
So, I was hoping to get some advice. Firstly, I figure I should probably get a larger SSD. Should I go external or internal? Does anyone have any recommendations that balances budget versus it being a good/reliable drive? I'm thinking I should go internal for speed reasons even if external might be more convinient.
Also, there is a lot of content I don't use. Gen 4 stuff. OG Genesis. Gensis 2. I use primarily Gensis 3, 8 and 9. Also, to be honest, some older proprs and sets just aren't up to current standards when it comes to texture work and such. Is there a good way to uninstall that old stuff using DIMM? And keep it from coming back? Since I'll be doing a fresh install anyway, this is a good time to think about this actually.
Currently in my filters I have the following checked:
Daz Studio 2025
Daz Studio 4.5+
Install Manager
Photoshop
General
But it is still downloading old Version 4 stuff, even stuff with .PS extensions.
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Comments
Why not use a mechanical drive?
As in a hard drive? In my experience they're slower so it'd take longer for scenes to load and it feels like they're more prone to failure to be honest.
Yes, they are slower - but DS has to do a fair bit of processing, depending on the sceen contents (especially figures with their morphs) so that is not necessarily as much of a bottleneck as the relative speeds imply.
There is nothing to stop you having content spread across multiple drives - so have frequently used content on an SSD and less frequently used on an HD. While I stand by the first paragraph, it is possible that the SSD's random access (it can grab any cell at once, instead of having to wait for the ehad to reach the right part of the disc) might make it a better choice for characters and their morphs (all those little .dsf files) while textures and big models might be prefectly fine on the HD.
You could just set up the desired paths in DIM and switch beteen them when installing content, so the worst aspect would be seelcting which products went to whch folder.
As for filtering, if you instaled the Default Filters package then when you click the funnel icon next to the filter box at top-right you will get a list of options, you can certainly filter by figure generation (Filtre by Name>Daz 3D>Figures>Generation), date, and SKU. Then you can seelct all and use the right-click menu to uninstall and hide the packages you don't want.
So far that is working for getting rid of the base figures. I'm guessing to get rid of old clothes/.hairs/sets I'll probably have to go by SKU or date. I have no idea what the dates on the old figures are so I'll probably start at the early SKUs and go from there.
Speaking as someone who has a very large library as well, if you go with an external hard drive, buy 2. One for back up. I just lost more than 5 years of artwork that I had done that was on a hard drive that failed well before it should have. Fortunatley I was already in the process of backing that drive up but to say that I am heartbroken would be an understatement. The laptop I use for rendering is starting to have issues so I broke down and paid my computer guy to build me a rendering machine. Its got a massive amount of TB on a second internal drive, that I will be using for all of my daz and art stuff. Should be ready next week. I have had my content library on an external hard drive for years though, and it will work as long as you are religious about backing it up. And its probably cheaper than the route I took even if you buy two.
You have your actual content library on an external drive? Wouldn't that be a lot slower than an internal drive?
Not even a little bit
Where are the default filters? I know they're installed, but I can't find what I need to click on to make them work.
A screenshot would help.
You can find the default filters by clicking that "funnel icon" in DIM, see the screen shot down below.
Also, all Default Filters are stored in this dir : C:\Users\Public\Documents\DAZ 3D\InstallManager\Filters
I've installed my DAZ Studio content on external hard drives for around 18 years.
I got into it in a big way when I bought my first Macintosh computer.
I didn't have enough room on the Mac's internal hard drive.
That practice has save me lots of grief as I changed Macintosh computers and eventually went back to PCs.
In fact, recently I setup my DAZ Content to work on 2 or 3 different PCS. Just moved the hard drive to a different computer. Oh then I copies the content from one "DAZ Content" drive to another!
****** Edited to add ****
Thanks for the tip on the default filters. I'm sure other people have mentioned it, and I forgot.
I do have some trouble with the terminology. It's related to the way DAZ has named Generations of products.
Let's see, Vicky 6 is Genesis 2 Female, etc.
I divided my DIM Installers & files on one 2TB USB SSD & the installed DAZ Content Library on another 2TB SSD. I have 9900 DIM Installer Products in total on the DIM only SSD.
USB 3.2 Type C 2TB m.2 nvme SSD:: Drive X: DAZ 3D Library: 575 GB free of 1.86TB
USB 3.2 Type C 2TB m.2 nvme SSD:: Drive Y: DAZ 3D Installer Files: 998 GB free of 1.86TB
So it looks I can probablly add about 5000 more DAZ 3D installer filles to my DIM only 2TB SSD. Fewer new products are possible because the imagges used in materials arre much higher resolution. This is only a very rough guess. On my budget, it will take years to fill them up by which time, if historical trends hold, replaciing themm both with 4TB SSDs will be possible.
I second the notion of backing up your DIM only Product Installer files on a 2nd SSD. You do noot want to redoownload all of those. With twoo of those, backing up your installed DAZ Content is less crucial but remember, you probably have some freebies yyoou occasionally use that you don't remember where the zip archive is fr them anymore and with the shutting down of Hivewire and ShareCG you may not be able to get a hold of those freebies again.
I would deinstall alll of your DAZ 3D DIM products, alll of your Poser installer products and rename the remaining DAZ Content Library to DAZ Content Freebie Library and keep it all on a 3rd smaller 1TB SSD. Then reinstall Poser but keep it's content on a 4th 1TB SSD. Then DIM DAZ Content Library only. Know what you got. Know where it's at.
Seriously? I've always heard external drives are slower than internal drives. Is it simply because USBs have gotten so much better?
Format matters - the default, FATwhichever, used for cross-platform compatibility can be slow; reformatting to the OS native format (e.g. NTFS) is likely to help.
I've learned it's best to get the largest hard drive you can afford. Then buy another one to backup everything.
I currently have two 8TB external hard drives. Yes, I have plenty of room.
I don't think it pays to divide your content into to many parts.
I have one folder called DAZ Originals for all my originals.
Currently, my content is divided into "Gen4," which includes all characters before Genesis. Then i have a Genesis content folder.
A third folder is "Everything Else."
Maybe. I'v never had any issue with load times. But I just had a machine built to run Daz studio that may change my mind lol. I honestly don't have to wait for anything to load unless its a huge environment or if I am loading a very large saved scene.
Yes, two external or even thee would be wise. With a third external hard drive, then you could also backup your backup files, incase the hard drive hosting the backups fails.
I prefer to have a NAS. I built two NAS boxes from two old computers and purchasing two licenses of Unraid. You could also build a raid using Windows as the operating system and using Windows storage spaces. On Unraid or Windows you would have to enable file sharing. Unraid uses Linux samba sharing which is their version of Windows file sharing. Nice thing about Unraid is your hard drives do not have to be all the same type or size. The only requirment is your parity drive must be equal to or larger then your largest data drive. Need more space, just add another drive or replace your smallest drive with one larger.
PS: If a data drive fails then the parity drive will create an emulation of the fail drive giving you access to the data on the failed drive. If you have two parity drives you can have two drives tail and still have access to your data.
When you replace the hard drive, it will be reconstructed from the parity drive ordrives.
The maximum nuber of parity drives you can have is two. You can also not have a parity drive but it a data drive fails, your data is lost unless you have good backups.
TrueNas is also another solution but it uses ZFS (whichi know very little about but understand the principal) and I believe all your drives must be of the same type and size.
I've used Windows storage spaces prior to building my second Unraid NAS.
What kind of SSD? Sata or NVMe?
You can put 4 NVMe SSDs in here:
Acasis 4 Bay 40Gbps M.2 NVMe RAID SSD Enclosure Compatible with Thunderbolt
https://www.acasis.com/products/acasis-40gbps-thunderbolt-3-m-2-nvme-4-bay-raid-ssd-enclosure
I'm sure there are multi-bay enclosures for Sata SSDs too.
NVMes connected via PCIe on the computer's motherboard would be taster than using an external Thunderbolt case, although the idea appeals to me. But for regular archive or backup of your main data a mechanical hard drive via USB3 I would prefer. In Canada on Boxing Day Best Buy is advertising a 14TB external WD hard drive for $229. Not sure if Best Buy USA will have the same item on sale. It would be a more cost effecieint use of money than the option you are looking at.
Hello,
So if I'm following correctly I can transfer from one drive to another when full or simply have two drives for content.
I have a very large third party content that would have to be re installed manualy :(
I would rather keep this separate and just DL or transfer Daz content which is easier.
Any thoughts/suggestions?
Thanks