Quick question for the gurus here. Daz Studio 4.12 on an external drive, about transferring folders.

tj_1ca9500b

Hi!

So, my current Daz setup is running 4.10 on an offline computer.  I have no intentions of connecting that computer to the internet ever, thanks to a nasty bout with a virus or something on the previous system almost a year ago.  I fugure if the new system is physically separated from the internet, that'll lower the odds of having issues.  Probably being overly paranoid, but I HATE dealing with such issues on computers that have all of the art files and such that I've spent years putting together.

However, I am planning on building an interim system soon, but the parts won't be available until November at the earliest (AMD Ryzen 3950X).  While I'm waiting, I'm thinking of downloading Studio 4.12 onto an external hard drive, and setting up the folders, etc. so that Daz will be operating off of said drive henceforth.

My current interim Daz system will be retired to HTPC duties once the 3950X build is complete, and the 3950X build will be assigned to another task once the large core count 7nm Threadrippers drop.

My question is, can I copy the contents of the folders from my C: partition for Daz as far as 'My Daz 3D Library' and the DIM folders, and such from my existing 4.10 install, and simply dump those into the new My Daz 3D Library, etc. folders once I finish installing Studio 4.12?  This way I won't have to download 7500+ items again, not to mention all of the free stuff sitting in My Library as well?  This seems like it should work, but I've never tried this before.

I'm not 100% sure I still have the zips for all of the packages I downloaded from Daz since picking up 4.9 a couple of years back.

Also, will I need to tweak any of the paths on the 4.12 install to accomodate the older files?  I suspect that I may need to point the texture paths of a few of my saved .duf files for the new install that use modified/self created texutes, but that's a separate issue that I'll deal with as such things occur.

BTW, I'd be connecting via this laptop I'm typing on, that I use to manually download packages onto a USB stick currently.  It has 4.9 installed, but the hard drive is essentially full and it's an older laptop with a 13.1" screen, so I mainly use the 4.9 install to double check freebies and such that I make, to make sure that I've included all of the relevant texture files and such and that everything will work ok for others if I share something.  I haven't installed new packages on this laptop for a couple of years now, with an exception or two.  Not really relevant except that I'd be using this laptop to set up the 4.12 install on the external drive.

I may eventually transfer said external drive to my new rendering build, but that's a few months off depending on how quickly the 32+ core 7nm Threadrippers show up.  It looks like the 7nm Threadripper November launch slide only mentions 24 cores at the moment....

I'd be temporarily using the 3950X build with the external drive for Studio 4.12, until the dedicated render build happens.

Just looking for guidance on this.  Any thoughts on this are most appreciated.

fastbike1

You need to make sure that the Content Library Manager paths in Studio match the Install Paths in DIM. Many people seem assume that these apps talk to each other, which is not true.

kenshaw011267

Doing this for the 3D assets is easy. The program itself needs to be installed.

If you haven't bought an external drive yet, since you intend for this to be temporary, get an external drive enclosure you can put a drive into and remove when you want. Then when you build the render box you can install the HDD directly in the computer.

tj_1ca9500b

Yeah the plan is to grab a drive that can be removed from the enclosure.  That's often the case but I imagine there are exceptions.  Still waffling between the relatively inexpensive 8-12 TB HDDs or a more expensive 4TB SSD.  I hate doing things twice, hence why I"m looking at the 4TB SSDs instead of just 2TB, although the 4TB SSDs are a bit more pricey.

I've been doing the opposite thing for a while now, that is transferring old drives to external enclosures so that I can access the files on newer systems, as those older systems are retired.

My current Daz install is pushing 1.5 TB already, and that doesn't include some files that I"ve already located onto another drive partition, such as my 'already installed' Install Manager product .zip packages and a number of texture files that I've created for my own use.

Obviously the external drive will be assigned a different drive letter, hence my question about 'dragging' the files in My Daz 3D Library, My Library, etc. over to the new install.

tj_1ca9500b

Just to be 100% clear here.  My plan is to download and install 4.12 onto the external drive, with the paths set up accordingly.  I was thinking of giving the external drive some fun letter like V for Vicky or M for Mika or something...

Once the new Daz install is up and running, that's when I'm looking at dragging over all of the folders from DIM, the Libraries, etc..  So hopefully I have the paths set up correctly for CMS and such before I drag over all of my 'older' content.

tj_1ca9500b

So, this happened...

I installed 4.12 onto a 10 TB, actually 9.5 something TB but that's just how HDD specs work these days, don't get me started.

I tried telling the 4.12 installer that I wanted the content based on my 'S' drive (S is for Studio), but when I started up Daz 4.12 it still used my 4.9 install data for all of the paths.

So I manually edited all of the paths in preferences to point at the 'S' drive using the 4.12 preferences menu option, and moved a bunch of folders from C: to S: with the associated content files.  Note that I haven't really used my 4.9 install much in over two years as the SSD on this laptop is pretty much full, and it's not quite 500GB in size.  So far so good.

I then tranferred the HDD to my offline computer, which has my install of 4.10, which has all of my more recent as well as older content, including a LOT of packages.  After a few hours of copying all of the additional files over, I start up 4.12 from the 'S:' drive, and it immediately points to the C: drive stuff on that install.  Not wanting to mess with my 4.10 install, I decide to leave the paths well enough alone for now on that computer.

I then go to start up 4.9 on this laptop, and of course all of the paths are broken as the 9.5 TB HDD currently isn't attached to this laptop.  Particularly CMS.  Apparently both Daz installs are sharing the same 'core' data for the paths.

So, not what I have in mind.

 

Surely there's a way to have separate file paths data for separate Daz installs.  How do I do this guys?