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Hard disk full

MJWMJW Posts: 524
in New Users

I am not a new user,, but returning after computer crash and other issues. Somehow I have download most of the products I have bought. This has filled my hard drive (C:), which I don't want to happen. How do I 

  1. uninstall most or all of the files (DMS does not seem to want to give me an option to do so)? I would prefer not to do the most recent and program files.
  2. set up DMS to keep the main program fimes on my C: drive but place all others on an external drive?

There are 14,000 files already installed, plus 2,200 more waiting, and 54 not downloaded, so it is a massive problem. 

I would prefer not to have to remove them in Windows Explorer (or whatever it is today) but I cannpt afford to have my hard drive overly full.

Please use a simple method to explain, as so far I have struggled to follow earlier explanations.

TIA

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Comments

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 100,948

    Are you sure the zips are still there? If theya re on disc, are they in the folder DIM is set to use for Downloads and were they installed from that folder?

  • frank0314frank0314 Posts: 14,056
    edited October 28

    Do you save your zip files as a backup? If so, be sure that you have your downloads location pointed to wherever you what them stored. Considering how quickly yours filled up, I'd have to guess that the zips are on your C:. If you wanted to, you can even install the content to an external drive.

    Post edited by frank0314 on
  • MJWMJW Posts: 524

    frank0314 said:

    Do you save your zip files as a backup? If so, be sure that you have your downloads location pointed to wherever you what them stored. Considering how quickly yours filled up, I'd have to guess that the zips are on your C:. If ou wanted to, you can even install the content to an external drive.

    Thanks.

    I do have a large number of zips, but I think they may be the ones not yet installed. It is how I set the DIM to install on a different drive, and whether I can simply transfer the files from the current 'package archive' (C:/Users/Public/Documents/DAZ 3D/InstallManager/Downloads) to an external drive. I have about three or four drives with Daz products, some duplicated, I am sure, but many not.  The number of Tbs is into double figures. I just don't know how to erase duplicates across the different drives and ensure that new items go to a drive other than my C: drive. Then I need to find how to transfer all but the essential program files from the C: drive across to an external drive, and still have DIM and Daz know they exist.

    I would seriously consider erasing it all and starting from scratch ( probably days of downloads) but it is no good unless I know exactly how to set up DIM to send things where I want them. 

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 100,948

    Click the gear icon at top-right and select Advanced options. The Downloads tab lets you specify where the zips go (and yes, you can move the ones you have already downloaded). The Instlalation tab lets you specify where  the content is installed (which DS has to know about) while the Manifests folder (which is gernally quite small) has the files that tell DIM what it has installed and where (exactly, unlike DS itself if you move the content DIM will not be able to uninstall it unless you update the manifests or reinstall using the current path settings - assuming you still have the zips).

  • Halcon BlueskyHalcon Bluesky Posts: 452

    MJW Don't panic!

    What you need to do first, buy a large external Hard drive.

    This will allow to store all the downloaded zips into the disk for later installation, saving you the time and the hasle to download again the files onto your computer.

    The other soulution to your problem apart of the external drive, is to buy a bigger internal hard drive, you can do a clean install and put all your applications later.

    If your computer is not so old, you can buy an NVMe SSD and install it into the motherboard, just make sure the capacity to run Windows 10/11 and all applications is 2 Tb or more.

    Don't settle for less.

    This can solve your problem.

    If you are tight of budget, then plan carefully and think what is your priority first.

    The Internal Hard Drive maybe your first option, if you can add the external drive followed by the SSD later.

    I wish you good luck.

  • Halcon BlueskyHalcon Bluesky Posts: 452
    edited October 29

    In addition to the above.

    My Install files reside in a secondary internal drive, This is Drive D

    Daz3D folder is in this drive, and the InstallManager folder is all what is needed to copy into the external Hard Drive.

    But your install may reside in Drive C, usually in the Users folder under your UserName, followed by the Documents folder.

    As you can see is a bit complex, I saved myself from too much stress and the secondary drive is a relief to me

    Also, if you have duplicates, is better to compare them with the structure of the files you have in the InstallManager folder

    Is easy to get confused when you get a lot of files crammed into the drives without knowing which are the ones you have and not.

    To be sure you are not working in vain, another external drive will do the job for you, then delete all the duplicates later

    Post edited by Halcon Bluesky on
  • MJWMJW Posts: 524

    Richard Haseltine said:

    Click the gear icon at top-right and select Advanced options. The Downloads tab lets you specify where the zips go (and yes, you can move the ones you have already downloaded). The Instlalation tab lets you specify where  the content is installed (which DS has to know about) while the Manifests folder (which is gernally quite small) has the files that tell DIM what it has installed and where (exactly, unlike DS itself if you move the content DIM will not be able to uninstall it unless you update the manifests or reinstall using the current path settings - assuming you still have the zips).

    Thankks, Richard,

    A significant pert of my problem is that I don't understand the terminology, and exactly which bits of the Advanced tab I need to change. For example, I don't understand what 'manifests' are! How would I update the manifests? 

  • MJWMJW Posts: 524

    Halcon Bluesky said:

    MJW Don't panic!

    What you need to do first, buy a large external Hard drive.

    This will allow to store all the downloaded zips into the disk for later installation, saving you the time and the hasle to download again the files onto your computer.

    The other soulution to your problem apart of the external drive, is to buy a bigger internal hard drive, you can do a clean install and put all your applications later.

    If your computer is not so old, you can buy an NVMe SSD and install it into the motherboard, just make sure the capacity to run Windows 10/11 and all applications is 2 Tb or more.

    Don't settle for less.

    This can solve your problem.

    If you are tight of budget, then plan carefully and think what is your priority first.

    The Internal Hard Drive maybe your first option, if you can add the external drive followed by the SSD later.

    I wish you good luck.

    I currently have a 2TB ssd main drive, plus about 10TB of  external (Daz-focussed) drives. I am sure there will be duplicate files on these, but I am loath to try deleting in case I delete ones to which work is linked. Perhaps I need to grin and bear it. Even an 8tb C: drive would not solve it. But my main problem is in understanding how to allocate what comes down through DIM to specific drives. I would like to keep essential items on C: for speed (assuming they are not too hungry) and the files relaring to content on a single external drive or maybe two smaller ones. All of this is a problem really because I seem to have regular catastrophic drive failures.

  • Halcon BlueskyHalcon Bluesky Posts: 452
    edited October 29

    MJW The SSD is your main disk in your computer, isn't?

    Then you need to add a secondary internal drive in your computer.

    The capacity can be as much as you need.

    Then you need to copy the installmanager folder into that drive.

    Save the documents that are of importance to you into an external disk.

    you must disconnect the secondary drive from the motherboard, to avoid problems when re-installing Windows, you can reconnect that later

    When done, you can erase/reformat the SSD drive and do a clean install.

    After that, install all the applications that you used.

    Daz 3D must be installed into Drive D.

    For that purpose you must install DIM first and then run.

    Change the install to D:\Daz 3D

    The installmanager folder must go to D:\Daz 3D

    The Manifest folder must be empty

    These parameters must be changed in DIM to work prperly

    There is no need to go online, DIM will take care of the installation, the only thing is that it will take some time to complete the install.

    I give you an idea how is my install scenario

    Good luck

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    Post edited by Halcon Bluesky on
  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 100,948

    MJW said:

    Richard Haseltine said:

    Click the gear icon at top-right and select Advanced options. The Downloads tab lets you specify where the zips go (and yes, you can move the ones you have already downloaded). The Instlalation tab lets you specify where  the content is installed (which DS has to know about) while the Manifests folder (which is gernally quite small) has the files that tell DIM what it has installed and where (exactly, unlike DS itself if you move the content DIM will not be able to uninstall it unless you update the manifests or reinstall using the current path settings - assuming you still have the zips).

    Thankks, Richard,

    A significant pert of my problem is that I don't understand the terminology, and exactly which bits of the Advanced tab I need to change. For example, I don't understand what 'manifests' are! How would I update the manifests? 

    The manifests are .dsx files which contain information. Potentially there are actually two of them for each product - one lives in the folder with the downloads and provides information about what is in the zip, the other lives in the manifests folder and is a recod of excatly what Install Manager did when installing the product. If the instalaltion manifest is missing then DIM will assume the product is not installed.

    You can use a text edittor to search-and-replace the isntalaltion paths in the manifests, but although that isn't hard I would not recommend it. Another option, if you kept the zips, is to update the isntallation path then seelct everything in the Installed tab, right-click on one, and use the Reinstall using current paths option.

  • MJWMJW Posts: 524

    Thank you Halcon Bluesky. This is the sort of guide for an idiot I needed. I take it that your D: drive (I already have one) could be any letter i choose which is not already allocated? How might I split things over more than one drive, as a large enough one for everything might bankrupt me?

    Thak you Richard. I used to always keep zips, but I suspect that somewhere I have stopped doing that by ticking 'Delete Package Once Installed'. DoooH!

  • LeanaLeana Posts: 11,718
    edited October 29

    MJW said:

    I take it that your D: drive (I already have one) could be any letter i choose which is not already allocated? 

    Yes, the drive letter used doesn't matter. If you use an external drive make sure you explicitly assign it a letter that won't change though, otherwise you will need to update the settings each time the letter changes.

    How might I split things over more than one drive, as a large enough one for everything might bankrupt me?

    You can only have one folder for package archive (where the downloaded zips go) and manifest archive in the "downloads" settings, and one install path for each application in the "applications" settings.  They don't all need to be on the same drive. The package archive is the one which may take lots of space, especially if you want to keep a backup of the zip after installation, so put it on a big drive. DS application itself and manifest archive don't take much space, so they could remain on C drive if you want.

    You can declare several content paths to install your content in "installation" settings, you'd then have several entries in the table at the bottom of the tab. For example in my DIM settings I have the default one on C drive, and one on a big external drive.

    If you declare several of them, you'll have a list where you can choose which install path to use for the next batch of installs in the main DIM window.
    You will also need to update DS preferences to tell it that there's DS content in all those locations, so it can find what you installed.

    Post edited by Leana on
  • frank0314frank0314 Posts: 14,056

    MJW said:

    Thank you Halcon Bluesky. This is the sort of guide for an idiot I needed. I take it that your D: drive (I already have one) could be any letter i choose which is not already allocated? How might I split things over more than one drive, as a large enough one for everything might bankrupt me?

    Thak you Richard. I used to always keep zips, but I suspect that somewhere I have stopped doing that by ticking 'Delete Package Once Installed'. DoooH!

    If you don't keep the zips as a backup, may I suggest always keeping the zip for Daz Studio itself. It becomes useful if you run into an issue with the current version and need to go back to the older one. Once you install the update, that zip for the previous version is lost. ATM Daz doesn't offer older versions of DS for download, so you need to do it yourself. Before you install the general release version, go to the downloads' folder wherever you are saving them and copy the zip and put it into another location so you have the backup. If you want to be safe, think about installing the beta of the new versions and test everything out to see if everything is going to work for you. You can have both installed at the same time, but the Beta is only downloadable from DIM.

  • Halcon BlueskyHalcon Bluesky Posts: 452

    MJW If you have a second internal storage (D:) then you can use the whole disk, splitting the disk is no good idea.

    For me is important to have the Daz 3D folder on D: drive, you may ask why?

    Pretty simple, as your Daz Figures, Environments, Poses and other assets are growing in size as well.

    The other situation I got when I did a clean install, was to delete the maifest files from the manifest folder, but Richard Haseltine says the files are needed.

    Anyway, I give you this useful link

    https://www.windowscentral.com/how-set-windows-11-without-microsoft-account

    Save the whole article, is best to copy and paste into a word processor for safe keeping, if you do not have MS Word, get libreoffice https://www.libreoffice.org/ this one is free and a good alternative to MS office.

    LOL, I had that one before, is time to get a new one, I printed out the whole thing, now is missing from my deskfrown, well What I can do?

    I will save that info later

    Good luck

  • MJWMJW Posts: 524

    Thank you to all who have contributed. I think I see a way through, difficult though it may be. I may simply cut my losses and start from scratch if I have to do so. I think I will need at least a 10Tb drive and as I have had so many drives die on me over the years (inclluding two SSDs, which are supposed to be foolproof), I was hoping I could split things across more than one. That sounds like that is not a good idea - it perhaps explains an error message I have had for some time about duplicate files when I load many of my items.

    Hey ho.

    Thanks to the Daz community helping out as always. I still don't understand what 'manifest files' are etc., but at least I am clearer on what to do with them.

    Stay safe.

  • felisfelis Posts: 4,338

    A manifest file, is a file, so DIM knows what is installed and where.

  • Halcon BlueskyHalcon Bluesky Posts: 452

    MJW Internal drives arre costing less, big capacities are better than ever before.

    The only thing to look out is if your internal SSD is about to fail one day.

    Usually this is supposed to have a life of around 5 years or so.

    If that is going to happen me one day, I will buy and replace it asap.

    Good luck 

  • MJWMJW Posts: 524

    Thanks again. My two failed SSDs did so much more rapidly than five years....

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