Installing DAZ Studio/DAZ Central onto external hard drive
Write Idea
Posts: 316
Happy Holidays to everyone!
My DAZ Library is becoming so large, I decided to purchase an external hard drive to contain everything. I decided to delete everything from my desktop and just start fresh (early spring cleaning?).
Is there a tutorial or walk through that can show me how to make sure everything is just on that external hard drive? I just want to make sure everything is in a central location.
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Comments
However you are installing {DIM, manually, etc.} make sure that all the pathways are going to that external drive. Be sure it is in its "home port" {so the number reads correctly, i.e. F, G, H, whatever}.
You might consider installing the program itself to the internal harddrive, and just all the My Library aka Content folders on the external drive. On W10 if the .exe file is not 'on board' when the computer is launched, all the desktop icons tend to go 'poof.' If externals are plugged in while launching W10, well ... not sure what happened but I don't do that anymore ;-) Computer launches better without externals attached. Attach external and wait for it to be 'read' - then can launch D/S. If one launches D/S before the external drive is ready it will throw the can't find something error message. AFAIK even if installing 'everything' to an external drive, there will still be some program files installed someplace on the computer - AppData for example. Those must stay there ;-)
Thank you for the feedback, Catherine!
Though, I'm not sure how to make sure the pathways are the correct one. I managed to install Daz Central into my External Hard Drive (D:\). And DAZ Studio is in the External Hard Drive as well (D:\). I normally install all of my products through Smart Content panel. All of that information is getting sent to my Desktop Documents folder (C:\Users\micha\Documents\DAZ 3D\Studio\My Daz Connect Library\data\cloud\meta).
How do I change it?
UPDATE: Products uploaded through DAZ Central get uploaded to my External Hard Drive (D:\), but I just can't figure out how to edit the path for Smart Conent.
Maybe this still works? https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/176106/how-to-change-cloud-location
Catherine...
...you're a genius!
Thank you times a million!
Happy to hear that you got it working! Enjoy rendering with Daz Studio :-)
Interesting and timely :-). I have used Poser since ver 6 (Curious Labs & 2006-ish?), but since my main content is G2F, and they (aka: Poser) broke G2F DSON Import in Poser-11, I fell back to Poser 10 (2014) for years. Poser-12 is making no attempt to fix this, so ... I'm looking towards DAZ 4.14
Anyway, long stroy short, I bought some basic G8F content (some staff picks bundles) and am trying to get figure out where to install.
My situation is SIMILAR to 'Write", but subtally different. I have a 256GB SDD used for W10 drive C - and I put NOTHING onto C: which needs backing up - so I don't mind apps and temp stuff being there, but NO daz content! Literally once a year or so I refomat C and resintall my apps. I have a 6TB internal drive (as F:) which is backed up regularly to an alternating pair of 6TB external drives. Even my 'Documents" directory was moved to F:\Documents (thanks - MS; that is useful in W10!).
IDeally, the DAZ3D app and all temp cache will be on C: (the SSD) and all input/output/content is on F:. It would be helpful is there was a simple FAQ which lists all of the various path\directory settings & explains if they are 'temp/cache' (aka: recreated) or source content.
DS stores some files in the AppData folder - mainly configuration - so you will want to back those up. The database is also on C: by default but you can change that in Edit>Preferences>CMS Settings. Install Manager will place files in Public docuemnts, its packages, its record of what was installed, and the actual content, but all of those are configurable through its settings. DS itself will use the Documents folder, so that should already be sorted.
There are also a couple of plugins/utilities for D/S which insist to store and/or save to folders on C: in Public Documents. I don't find this a major problem - just makes for a few extra places to clear out or rearrange every now and then.
A word of warning about external drives and drive letter assignment.
When I moved house recently and reconnected my two external drives, Windows had randomly assigned new drive letters to them and links to saved scenes were broken. I'm about to move again so read up on this. Apparently you can permanently assign a drive letter to an external drive so it doen't change when unplugged and plugged back in again, using the Disk Management tool. I did this with my 2 external drives. Fingers crossed it works.
I'd second this, but also suggest picking a higher letter than D or E. In my case, my 'fixed external drive' actually connects as "P"! I am assuming no misc internal CD or other device will consume all the leters from 'D' to 'P'
. However, since it is encrypted, it will also mount on a lower driver letter in the decrypted-access form. I picked "F" for the normal mount of the open encrypted partion "P".