Migrating DAZ Studio to new hard drive

mpathy

Hello everybody,

after watching my content library steadily grow over the past few months DAZ Studio has become very slow to load. Opening a single scene can take upwards of 3 or 4 minutes, which makes working on multiple scenes at once really painful. My library is currently stored on a regular HDD, but I've since invested into a new SSD specifically for DAZ Studio, but I'm unsure about the migration process. Maybe someone could shed some light on the folllowing questions regarding the process:

1. What folders specifically do I need to move? I assume most of the load time stems from various morphs and textures stored in the "My DAZ 3D Library" folder and the scene files themselves. Is there anything else that I would need to move over, like CMS related files for the database?
2. Would moving the installation of DAZ Studio speed up the worklflow? If so, can I do a fresh install on my SSD and just set the content library folder to the one on the SSD and it will re-index everything from there? Can I savely uninstall the existing version of DAZ without killing my content library or anything else important?
3. Would a move like that affect existing scenes? I assume all references to textures etc. stored in the scene files are relative to the DAZ Studio content library, or would they still point to the old paths on my disk? If so can I migrate my scenes?

Maybe I'm just overthinking things here, but I would hate to lose access to my existing scenes.

Richard Haseltine

First, for figures a lot of the load time is not down to disc access but rather to hooking up all the relationships between the morphs - so the SSD may not make that much difference there.

1. You can just move the content folders across and point DS to them, but you can move the database too if you like.

2. Moving DS would somewhat speed start up (but again, not everything as many internal operations are performed in which disc access is not an issue)

3. DS itself uses relative paths - just the location within the content directory - for saved scenes and presets, as long as the files were loaded from a content directory. If you installed your content through Install Manager/Daz Central then the installation data will have the absolute location. In DIM, if you still have the zips, you can chaneg the path to the new location, then select everything in the Installed tab, right-click, and choose the option to reinstall all selected using the current path. Otherwise you could back up the Manifests folder and then use a text editor to batch edit the .dsx files to change the paths.

marksinister_0f3a44cacc

You can try using a program called PrimoCache I use it to some success. Although when it comes to Genesis 8 it doesn't do much for loading all your morphs if you have a lot installed on your machine. But when it comes to loading the application and the Daz Database it make a big difference.

You can use it to Cache larger HDD with smaller SSD drives.

mpathy

Thank you, as always, for the quick reply Richard.

Richard Haseltine said:

3. DS itself uses relative paths - just the location within the content directory - for saved scenes and presets, as long as the files were loaded from a content directory. If you installed your content through Install Manager/Daz Central then the installation data will have the absolute location. In DIM, if you still have the zips, you can chaneg the path to the new location, then select everything in the Installed tab, right-click, and choose the option to reinstall all selected using the current path. Otherwise you could back up the Manifests folder and then use a text editor to batch edit the .dsx files to change the paths.

I think that is where I am going to run into issues. My library is a mix of content bought from the DAZ store, some from 3rd party stores, and assets from various sources that didn't necessarily conform to the structure DIM was expecting, so I had to installl them by copying the content over to my library. Now I do still have most of those zip files, but it would be almost impossible to figure out which of these are compatible with DIM and to reinstall the rest manually. But I'm still not 100% sure I understood the issue correctly, so maybe you could elaborate on this a bit further: If I understand correctly, any asset installed via DIM is recorded in the manifest with a record of the full path where the asset was installed, correct? Does this affect anything inside DAZ Studio, as in the database/CMS? If these packages are already in my library before I copy it over, will DAZ Studio not index them properly once I have pointed it to a new location for the library? I don't really use the smart content tab anyway and mostly use the content library tab, since many of my assets aren't compatible with smart content. Once I point DIM to the new library folder, shouldn't it download all assets I have bought from the DAZ store be re-downloaded into the new location, overwriting existing (identical) assets?

My apologies for the many questions, I'm just not really familiar with the CMS/DIM side of things yet and haven't really been able to find any resources that explain their relationship.

marksinister_0f3a44cacc

I recommend using Content Package Assist for non Daz or old Daz content. You should be able to move your Runtime\My DAZ 3D Library folder to any drive you would like. In my case I used External USB 3 HDD for their large capacity.

 

In my settings I have 3 USB Drives. Each has a path in "Content Directory Manager" pointing to their "My Daz 3D Library" folder. On top of that I have the same drives in the "Poser Formats" With paths point into each drive for Poser content. Poser content is usually older runtime folders that doesn't use Daz Studio paths.

If I want to test content or not mix them into my current Runtime\My Daz Library I would just make another folder add the Runtime\My Daz Library content to it then add a path to it in these settings and it will show up as it's on folder in your Content Library. The only problem with doing that is making to many folders tend to slowdown your Content Database. But if you have a SSD your Smart Content should load fairly quickly either way. If you use Smart Content Tab that is.

Richard Haseltine

mpathy said:

Thank you, as always, for the quick reply Richard.

Richard Haseltine said:

3. DS itself uses relative paths - just the location within the content directory - for saved scenes and presets, as long as the files were loaded from a content directory. If you installed your content through Install Manager/Daz Central then the installation data will have the absolute location. In DIM, if you still have the zips, you can chaneg the path to the new location, then select everything in the Installed tab, right-click, and choose the option to reinstall all selected using the current path. Otherwise you could back up the Manifests folder and then use a text editor to batch edit the .dsx files to change the paths.

I think that is where I am going to run into issues. My library is a mix of content bought from the DAZ store, some from 3rd party stores, and assets from various sources that didn't necessarily conform to the structure DIM was expecting, so I had to installl them by copying the content over to my library. Now I do still have most of those zip files, but it would be almost impossible to figure out which of these are compatible with DIM and to reinstall the rest manually. But I'm still not 100% sure I understood the issue correctly, so maybe you could elaborate on this a bit further: If I understand correctly, any asset installed via DIM is recorded in the manifest with a record of the full path where the asset was installed, correct? Does this affect anything inside DAZ Studio, as in the database/CMS? If these packages are already in my library before I copy it over, will DAZ Studio not index them properly once I have pointed it to a new location for the library? I don't really use the smart content tab anyway and mostly use the content library tab, since many of my assets aren't compatible with smart content. Once I point DIM to the new library folder, shouldn't it download all assets I have bought from the DAZ store be re-downloaded into the new location, overwriting existing (identical) assets?

My apologies for the many questions, I'm just not really familiar with the CMS/DIM side of things yet and haven't really been able to find any resources that explain their relationship.

The manifest is sued only by DIM/Daz Central, so you need to worry only for content installed through those. Anything you have installed manually can be moved to a different content directory with impunity