New PC - how to migrate Daz?

deepswing

Hey folks,

I am about to get a new PC and will have to transfer all of my Daz studio files over there. I do own content from both Daz and other web sites I manually installed (and manually created metadata, which took a lot of time), and I don't want to lose all my hard work in maintaining my library.

I have found this thread (https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/4158806/) to copy your library to a different drive, but does this work for different installations as well? How would I migrate everything to a new PC?

Thanks for your help!

Richard Haseltine

If both are Windows machines running the same PostgreSQL then you can, with DS, DIM, and other Daz applications closed, copy the ContentCluster to the equivalent location on the new machine - that, plus the content directories, will give you all of your content organisation. By default the database is, for Windows, in:

%AppData%/daz 3d/cms/contentcluster/

DIM/Daz Central are less tolerant as they need to record exactly where the fiels went, so that they can be uninstalled. If you still have the zips just copy the DIM folders across (the manifests folder is the one that shows what was installed), start DIM, set its paths (if the defaults are not correct), select everything in the Installed tab and right-click, then choose the option to reinstall all selected using the current paths. Daz Studio, its plug-ins, and some scripts/sahders will need to be reinstalled anyway.

deepswing

Thanks very much, Richard, I will try this once the new machine arrived. I will certainly not delete anything but wait for everything to work. Will report back then and try the way you just described.

deepswing

Hi Richard,

Alright, now that my new PC has arrived, I followed your steps, and what should I say - IT WORKS!

First, I copied over my own Daz library to a new folder where it should reside. Then, I installed DIM, Daz Central and Daz Studio as a fresh install on my new PC with its standard settings (which were the same on my old PC). I then opened Daz Studio for the first time and added my own library to the CMS (not sure if it was needed, though). I closed down Daz and copied over these two directories:

• The CMS library (see above)
• The library where Daz stores its content (in standard it's here: C:\Daz 3D\Applications\Data\DAZ 3D\My DAZ 3D Library)

As both directories already existed, I made sure to rename them to something else to not overwrite something. 

Then, I opened Daz Studio again, now that everything should have been in place. Daz recognized it and mentioned I need to re-log in to update metadata (I assume they want to make sure I don't have stuff from someone else which I never bought, which makes sense), and afterwards the system was working. 

The only thing I needed to update were my scripts I bought, e.g. the Mesh Grabber tool, as it didn't show up. For this, I opened DIM and uninstalled and installed the Mesh Grabber (re-install was not available, as DIM automatically removes the files after installation, I changed that setting now...). This worked as well.

So for now, I don't see any issues, system behaves as normal, stuff from my own library is still there INCLUDING the metadata I created.

I owe you (at least) a beer, Richard. Thanks for your help! If anything comes up later, I will post it here. 

My next step will be to move the official Daz library to a new place, but there's a good thread here to explain how it works. 

Richard Haseltine

Actually the updating metadata is from Daz to you, it isn't there to spot iffy content but to make sure DS knows what you own so it can offer to install any missing Daz content when you open a scene.

teodell_70

Hi Richard and all thanks for the help. I copied the cms, the library. and then reinstalled everything and it seems to be worked fine.

Thanks,

Todd