1 Terabyte Drive 90% full
vonHobo
Posts: 1,656
I purchased an Alienware Gaming PC nearly two years ago when I starting using DAZ Studio.
It's been great, and it came with a 1 Terabyte drive.
I've purchased so much content over the last two years. I don't even want to say how much money I've spent. It's embarrassing!
Now the drive on the PC is 90% full I noticed. And at the rate I'm going it won't take long before it's full completely.
What do people do when they encounter this situation? I've never filled up a drive on a desktop computer before ever in my life. OMG
Do I just stop buying products on DAZ? Do I order a larger C: drive and go through the hell of migrating to a new setup on the new drive?
I don't really want to buy a new PC after just 2 years. But the next one I do purchase will have a 2TB or larger drive I can assure you.
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Comments
I would buy an additional internal drive, create a Daz folder on it, point your perfered install method to that new location and add the new location to DS
I currently have 5 internal hard drives
Before you buy a drive make sure there is room for one. Some of those Dell cases are very small. If there is room, and the PSU has a spare SATA power connector, then get a new HDD and put it in and you should be fine for a while. 4 Tb drives are a pretty good deal right now, the basic consumer versions from WD and Seagate are $90 right now.
OK. Thank you. I will check and go from there.
What size C: drive do you recommened on a new PC? The system I bought came with 1 Tb.
Can you even purchase a new PC with more than 1 Tb standard?
I always just assumed that it was an unalterable law of the universe that any hard drive -- no matter how large -- always has 5% space remaining. Got a 1TB drive? 95% full. Buy a 14TB drive? Within a month, you'll have accumulated 13.3TB of data.
More seriously, if your desktop has a spare drive bay, it ought to be fairly cheap and easy to buy and install a new drive. I've found WD Black HDs to be fast and reliable (touch wood). You could also go the SSD route (more speed, less capacity for your dollar). Samsung, Crucial and SanDisk are all good brands. If you don't have a spare bay (or you don't want the hassle of opening up your box), you can get tiny external SSDs that you can connect via USB. Samsung T5s and SanDisk Pros are both good and they're cheaper than ever before. And DAZ Studio will run just fine with its content folder on a separate volume. No need to migrate the OS and your other stuff; just copy your content folder over to the new drive, tell DIM and DAZ Studio where to find it, and you're done.
I went to a 2 TB external drive. And have replaced that with a 4 TB external drive. For laptop use I've found the 18 inch/half meter cable that comes with the drive works quite well; I tuck the drive under my leg when not at home (Starbucks).
Thanks for all the recommendations!
I have a strong aversion to moving content around and changing paths. Not because I don't have the technical know-how, but just because I don't want the headaches that always seem to come with such a task. You read through the forums here and see all kinds of posts on issues related to non-default DAZ installation paths. Enough to make your head spin.
I think I've decided to clean up my hard drive. There is a lot of DAZ content that I have purchased, and unfortunately, never plan to use again. So I can uninstall most of it. That should buy me some time before I upgrade to a new PC in a year or two... fingers crossed! And I will then order a new PC with a 2 Tb + drive from the get go.
Having done it multiple times (I have been buying content since the pre Daz3d Zygote days), it isn't that big a deal if you understand what needs to be pointed where.
It depends on your use case.
I build custom PC's so I'll build what ever you want.
Generally at this point most people want high speed boot drives and those top out at around 2Tb. but you can certainly get quite large storage drives as well.
The thing to do is not to buy from Dell. Alieware is just an nameplate for Dell, or HP. They are pretty awful.
If you go to someone like iBuyPower they will let you customize your system quite extensively including choosing the capacity of your boot drive and adding a second, and maybe a thrid HDD.
wow. no more alienware for me.
thanks for the insight.
If possible to add a new drive, do so. Otherwise, just plug in a big external drive for the overflow until you get your new system. It will be slower but ... A good cleanup is an idea too, but uninstalling, remember, the textures are the big thing - make sure you find and delete those.
I expanded to a 2TB drive and filled it almost instantly ... had a new computer custom built and put in a 10 TB. Hoping that will last me. If only I could stop SHOPPING.
Yes. that is the issue. Shopping. LOL
This is for my business, so I don't mind getting a new PC with a larger drive, but I only use DAZ for reference images and I really don't need that much content. And shouldn't be buying every new shiny release of DAZ content. I would hate to turn over a new PC after just two years. So I will try several options.
Many thanks.
1. In general it is a very bad (very very bad) idea to install anything but Windows and maybe the actual programs on C-drive
2. You can mount a hard drive to a directory on another hard drive, which increases the capacity of that directory with the capacity of the new drive (Runtime/Textures).
3. Sysinternals Junction can mount directories where ever you want to put them without breaking the original directory structure https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/junction
4. Get more drives (I'm currently at 14 drives / 18TB), a 5TB USB HD should be good for a "while"
I'm going to try uninstalling uneeded content first, before getting another drive.
I know that for 3rd party content in My Library, you have to be careful to delete all the files.
But for DAZ Install Manager, which I use for all DAZ Smart Content, does uninstalling also remove all files, including texture files?
Can't thank everyone enough for the feedback!
You can very easily install programs to any drive. Windows cannot easily be installed anywehre but its default location.
My Daz Studio installation is not on C:/. None of my games are even installed on drives on this computer.
I know, the "maybe" was for those that don't have more than two drives.
Will DIM uninstall and delete all parts of content, including textures, provided the content was installed with DIM?
Yes, it will delete all files it installed for that product.
Thank you Leana.
I personally would not uninstall anything. It leaves a tangled mess sort of and consumes a lot of time. I would in your case invest in at least a 2tb SSD drive.
You have to take the side off of your computer case and look inside. Look for an extra SATA connector on the motherboard and an extra SATA style power connector for a hard drive.
Look for videos on YouTube on how to connect a SATA SSD drive and yes, your power supply may need a little extra power for this addition.
If your power supply is not rated high enough you can pick one up at BestBuy and if it does not fit or work right you can take it back.
Generally a 600-800 watt power supply should run a couple drives and your other devices.
If you do not have an extra connector you can get a converter and convert one of your extra power connectors.
Even if you have no extra room or drive bays you can Velcro an SSD drive almost anywhere inside your case. With an SSD drive your models load about 12 times faster and this is a huge time saver when working on scenes.
If you can get an even larger ssd drive that is great!
https://smile.amazon.com/Samsung-Inch-Internal-MZ-76E2T0B-AM/dp/B0786QNSBD/ref=sr_1_4
https://smile.amazon.com/ARESGAME-Supply-Modular-Bronze-AGV750/dp/B08JM12SQ5/ref=sr_1_5
These are just some suggestions.
A SSD drive will also let you copy over your models folder faster from your C drive.
Much appreciated. Thank you!