Copy Content Database to a new system?

argel1200

My old PC died so I'm building out a new one. My most of my content is on an external drive so I was wondering if would be possible to copy the content database from the hard drive from the old system to the new one so I can avoid having to reinstall everything?

Richard Haseltine

Edit>Preferences>CMS (Daz Studio>Preferences>CMS for a Mac) gives the location of the ContentCluster folder, which is the database. Make sure PostgreSQL isn't running while copying and pasting. The paths are stored as relative, just the location within the content directory, so you don't need to worry about matching content directory names.

argel1200

I tried starting off with just DIM installed, and used that to install CMS. When I try to conenct to CMS, I see a 'role "<my_username>" does not exist' error in the dblog and doesn't look like I can connect to it. Any idea how to fix that?

Richard Haseltine

Is this an admin account or a regular account? Is UAC on, assuming it's a Windows system?

argel1200

Windows 10 Pro with UAC on, and my account is an admin account.

 

EDIT1:  I unstalled DIM and installed DAZ Studio 4.12 via a manual download and was able to get everything working!!  Thanks for the help!!

EDIT2:  I did have to redo some settings in DS, like content directories. Here's a couple that took me a while to track down that might help some others out:

• To revrese the scrollwheel / scroll wheel zoom:
  1. Windows > Workspace > Customize or just hit F3)
  2. Then, all the way at the bottom of the default panel (Actions):
     • Check Mouse Wheel Mofifiers: [x] Invert Mouse Wheel
• To change highlighting from Bounding Box and Surface to just Bounding Box:
  1. Window > Panes (Tabs) > Draw Settings
  2. Change Highlight Style to "Bounding Box Only"
  • Note: The NVIDAY IRAY preview rendering settings are  here (Tool mode: Exposure, White Balance, or Both).

Different Username / home directory

And if e.g. your home directory on WIdnows has changes, here's a trick you can use.  For example, mine changes Owner to "argel". As an administrator, run these in a command prompt:

cd C:\Users
mklink /J <username_from_old_PC> <full path to home directory on this PC>

Note: /J creates a Junction Link, which is a symbolic link to a directory that behaves more like a hard link does.

Examples:

mklink /J Owner C:\Users\argel

c:\Users>dir
 Volume in drive C is Windows
 Volume Serial Number is XXXX-XXXX

 Directory of c:\Users

09/27/2019  07:26 AM    <DIR>          .
09/27/2019  07:26 AM    <DIR>          ..
09/29/2019  05:07 AM    <DIR>          argel
09/27/2019  07:26 AM    <JUNCTION>     Owner [C:\Users\argel]
09/27/2019  07:51 AM    <DIR>          Public
               0 File(s)              0 bytes
               5 Dir(s)  380,823,224,320 bytes free

Junction and symbolix links aren't a perfect solution as e.g. DIM on very rare occasions can whack them (can only happen with administartor privileges and even then it's rare). If that happens, just copy over everythign in (using the example) C:\Users\Owner to C:\Users\argel and then recreate, delete Owner, then then recreate the junction link as per above.

FWIW, almost all my content is on my S: drive, and I have Junction links to them on my C: drive and I've had one Junction link whacked one time so far.  I made my life easier by mirroring the directory structure: e.g. if my junction links are in C:\Users\argel\documents  then I have an S:\Users\argel\documents.

Some useful locations to know

C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Roamin\DAZ3D

Accessing your files on the old drive

Windows Explorer / UAC won't let you enter your old home directory by default.  The easiest way to remedy this is to take Ownership of the directory. If you erceive errors doign that, you may need to use icacls from a command prompt run as an administrator. I hunted down what to do, so don't know the exact command I used anymore. I think it was something likes this but it's not fully tested: 

1. Start a Command Prompt run as administrator
2. cd <drive letter of hard drive from old PC>:\Users\<username from old PC>  (e.g. cd O:\Users\Owner)
3. icacls . /T /grant <user>:(OI)(CI)f  (e.g. icacls . /T /grant argel:(OI)(CI)f

Directory locations

Most fo the directories you will care about are goign to be located under (this appis to the hard drive from the old PC and your new PC).

<drive letter>:\Users\<userename>AppData\Roaming\DAZ  3D

Examples:

O:\Users\Owner\AppData\Roaming\DAZ 3D   (my old PC)

C:\Users\argel\AppData\Romaing\DAZ 3D  (new PC)
C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Romaing\DAZ 3D  (new PC leveraging the junction link created above)

You'll probably find the cms, InstallManager, and Studio4 files here.

Hope the above helps someone out (or may several years from now)! :D