Moving Everything to the D Drive

Gemini Queen

Recently I went to the Best Buy and got quotes on some of the newer equipment that I would need to upgrade my computer. However, one of the things that I asked for was a hard drive. Needless to say, I discovered that I don't have 250 GB of storage, I actually have almost 1TB in the D drive (I felt like an idiot). SO! What I would like to do is move everything to my D Drive so I can safely download whatever else it is that I want without having to worry about not having enough space. I'm currently running a Windows 10 system. I did look around for some tutorials, and this is the most detailed one that I found: 

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/338321/how-do-i-move-my-content-to-another-drive

Alas, it is 2 years old at this point, and wanted to make sure that using this method isn't going to destroy my computer or anything. Worst comes to worst, I was just going to uninstall all of Daz, then reinstall it on the D drive as I know for a fact that wouldn't mess anything up(fingers crossed), but that takes a really looong time. 

Also, another question that I had: A tech friend of mine made the point that if I were to install Daz on my D drive, it would run significantly slower, and so it really isn't worth putting it on there. Is it true? Does having a good graphics card, a strong CPU and 16 GB of RAM mean nothing if you've got it on the D drive? Thanks in advanced for your help with this! 

lindans

My Daz library is on my D drive haven't had any problems, My installation path was set up using Daz Install Manager just pointed it to where I wanted to install my daz library -  D:\My Daz 3D Library

Freightliner Fox

The method in that thread still works. I just used it about a week ago to move my content to a different drive.

As far as whether things will run slower if you move it to your D drive? It depends. More than likely, your C drive is an SSD drive (no moving parts) where as your larger D drive is an older style mechanical drive with moving parts. In that case, yes, things will run slower if you move them to the D drive because mechanical drives are, by nature, slower than SSD drives.

Note that this won't affect your render speeds or anything. It might just make figures load a bit slower when you load them into your scene. If you install Daz on your D drive, it will take a bit longer to start up, but it won't have much affect, if any, while you are actually using it.

If you are really concerned about it, you could replace the D drive with an SSD drive. You can pick up 1 TB SSD drives for under $100 these days and they are easy to install yourself. Trust me, the inside of your computer is not as scary as you might think it is. Replacing a hard disk is just a matter of unplugging two cables from the old drive, plugging them into the new one, and screwing the new drive into the place where the old one currently is. The only caveat here is that you might need an adapter to make the new drive fit in the drive bay since mechanical hard disks are often 3.5 inches in size, where as SSD's are typically 2.5 inches. The adapter just scews onto the SSD to make it a bit bigger so it fits in the 3.5 inch bay. Here's an example of one:

https://www.amazon.com/Mounting-Bracket-SNANSHI-Adapter-Holder/dp/B0183FSG68

You can find a bunch of videos on YouTube showing you how to replace a hard drive. Even if it's your first time doing it, you can probably do it in less than 10 minutes. If you do this, your D drive will be just as fast as your C drive.

Gemini Queen

lindans - Thanks so much for this, it  me out a bit! I was just so scared about my system slowing down becuase of moving it, but I'll try and follow the explanation given in the forum link that I found. 

Freightliner Fox - You are so super helpful all the time and I love it! I will definately keep the forum link saved for reference when I do get to moving it. And my render speeds is somethign that I was super concerned about cause they run really fast and smooth right now, and the last thing I wanted for them to start taking like 30 min or somehting like that. And you know, I used to take PCs apart as a kid, but as an adult, all I can see is my $800 baby sitting there on the desk and I freak out at the thought of handling it to upgrade it myself. But I will certainly look inot purchasing the SSD for the D drive, that way I can move it and not worry about the space. Thanks so much for this!

coralyn

I'd second that 'moving' your content to 'D' works fine - worstcase, you'll end up with some things in 2 places at first (can archive.remove the old 'C' stuff later). Two added comments:

1. You can also move your "My Documents" from "C:\user\{me}" to "D:". This should actually copy the old to new. This works great in Win10, but was VERY problematic in older Win7 (etc) as too many tools used your direct \user\{me}\ path.
2. Since 2018, I've kept all my 'personal/dynamic' data on a second drive, which allows me to reformat my C upon need (or a whim) without affecting my data.

At the moment I have a 240GB SSD for C (is 50% full?), and a tradional 6TB internal drive as "F", plus back F up weekly on a pair of external USB 6TB drives. I don't bother backing up C! I have redone my drive C: at least 6 times since I started this, and never had to save/sift-through my Docs, Pics, or 3D content. DazStudio puts all the 'temp" and "cache" files on my C/SSD, and the My Library and Renders are on F:

coralyn

Gemini Queen said:

... tech friend of mine made the point that if I were to install Daz on my D drive, it would run significantly slower, and so it really isn't worth putting it on there. Is it true? Does having a good graphics card, a strong CPU and 16 GB of RAM mean nothing if you've got it on the D drive? Thanks in advanced for your help with this! 

As for this, there is zero reason a 'D:' is slower or faster than a 'C:'.As some have mentioned above, a slower hardware device is, well SLOWER! That's not because it's the primary or secondary. Now, not to dive into the weeds too much, there are mother-boards with multiple SATA sockets (the port your HD plugs into) & often 2 or 3 driver chips, and if you have several hard-drives, plus a CD, DVD, etc, then how you mix these can have a big impact as older HW had master & slave drives (blah blah). In general you don't want to mix 'slow' and 'fast' on the same chip. However, there is NO easy way to evaluate this without a board maker's docs how to optimize thIs. One clue that you DO HAVE multiple disk-chips, is if your port are in 2 different colors. For example, my last mother-board has 4 'red' SATA ports and 2 'pink' ones. READING the motherboard manual made it clear you should put hard-drives on the RED and CD/DVD on the PINK, as this kept the slow CD from blocking the HDD. But this doesn't help you.

Gemini Queen

coralyn Thank you for that explanation! All this really makes me feel a lot better about trying to move everything over.