Moving Content
Jason Galterio
Posts: 2,562
I have DAZ Studio and all my DAZ Connect content on an external SSD HD. Unfortunately I am now running out of space on that drive and 1GB ExSSDs are still too expensive for me....
Does anyone know any easy way to transfer this data to another HD without having to re-download the Connect items?
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Connect
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Connect uses relative paths - as long as the files are still in a content diectory the database wills till find them and they will show as before. It's DIM which stores the absolute paths, in the .dsx files in the Manifests folder, which may cause an issue when updating - you can, in preferences, tell DIM to install updates to the current isntall location not the original installation location, but there's a risk, if a fiel was removed and not replaced by an update, that you will get odd conflcits.
So... Theoretically...
Since DS, as well as the DS Connect content is on the external drive, I can...
Install DS to the internal HD, with the ExHD disconnected.
Connect the ExHD and copy the external Connect directory into the new internal Connect directory.
Reinstall the DIM items to the internal installation.
I mean, it shouldn't hurt anything since the external HD will still be intact regardless of what I do to the internal drive, correct?
Yes, that should be fine.
I will give it a shot this weekend and post the results. Might be helpful to others later. Thanks for the assistance! I was about to spend the weekend re-downloading 500 GBs.
There were a couple of hitches, but everything seems to have come off fine. Thanks for the advice.
For anyone else interested...
1. With the ExHD disconnected I uninstalled all DAZ programs using DIM.
2. I manually deleted some directories that remained behind. Items in the My Documents directory and Program Files directories, for example.
3. Last step was to uninstall DIM through my Windows system.
4. Emptied the recycle bin, rebooted.
5. Downloaded and installed DIM.
6. Ran DIM and set up the configurations again, reassigned the directories (DIM Download directory, 32 and 64 bit software directories, DAZ Connect directory).
7. Closed DIM and reopened it. Had it download the latest DS (as well as Hexagon).
8. Double checked the directory settings in DIM. Installed DS (and Hexagon).
9. Exited DIM. Ran DS. Determined that it was functional.
10. Exited DS. Connected the ExHD. Copied the DAZ Connect files from the ExHD to the new internal DAZ Connect directory.
11. Shutdown the computer, disconnected the ExHD. Rebooted.
12. Ran DS. Went to the Content Library. Went into Content Directory Manager. Pointed the DAZ Connect entry to the new DAZ Connect directory. Waited while things synced up.
Currently I am downloading the missing files that couldn't fit on the ExHD. After that I am going to run DIM, see what else might be missing, and install those. Along with any plug ins and other software that might be missing.
My steps might be overly cautious (with all of the double checking and rebooting) but better cautious then spending a weekend re-downloading.
My advice... Don't follow this. It caused more problems than time it saved.
In the end I had to delete it all and redownload everything through DAZ Connect anyway.