Anyone successfully Move ALL of Daz Library and Files to a new drive? Advice pls-SOLVED

sunnyjei

Hello! As it goes with Daz - it has outgrown its current drive and I got a new drive with double+ the space. In the past I've attempted to move Daz to a new drive/new computer and had nothing but problems and I'd like to avoid that if possible T_T. Has anyone successfully managed to move the entirety of Daz Apps and files to a new drive? Idealy I would just copy everything from Drive A to Drive B - keeping all the same file structures just different drive name (drive a/ Daz stuff/ DazLibrary/.... to drive B/Daz stuff/DazLibrary/...) then just change the drive letter in all the places that need to be updated.

Is this possible? If not what's the closest to it? Advice/steps greatly appreciated :)

 

 

Edit:

Windows 11- I use DIM to install everything from the Daz store and the script/utility Content Wizard to 'manually' install everything else.

frank0314

When you say "copy everything" what does that mean? How do you install all your products? You can't move the app itself just by copy and paste. The app itself needs reinstalled if you are moving that as well. You shouldn't need to move that though, just the content and that's dependent on how you install the products as to what needs moved.

Phatmartino

I posted a tutorial for just moving the Content (not Daz Studio itself which really doesn't take that much space) here:

 

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/407716/moving-daz-content-off-of-c-drive-in-2020#latest

 

A lot of people don't seem to like wordy detailed instructions, but if you take 5 minutes to just read the first post and only use what you really need from it, you'll see it's really just a few steps. It is a bit lengthy just because I wanted anyone to be able to follow it.

Take a look and feel free to ask questions there if needed!

sunnyjei

frank0314 said:

When you say "copy everything" what does that mean? How do you install all your products? You can't move the app itself just by copy and paste. The app itself needs reinstalled if you are moving that as well. You shouldn't need to move that though, just the content and that's dependent on how you install the products as to what needs moved.

Sorry didn't think to include that info. I install everything purchased from the Daz store via DIM and things from Renderosity via a Daz script/utility called Content Wizard (https://www.daz3d.com/content-wizard). I would very literally like to just copy EVERYTHING Daz related to the new drive and hopefully just update the new drive info in say DIM and Daz Studio. I'm afraid changing too much will bork it all again like last time when I moved to a new pc. If I can't just 'switch drives' for all the Daz stuff (wish I could just copy everything and rename the drives and it all work T_T) then if I have the apps (Dim/Daz Studio) on Drive A and the library on Drive B- is it possible to have the library split across two drives? (Not sure if this complicates things but if I can't move everything to the new drive without uninstalling/reinstalling maybe a split library is better?)

 

@Phatmartino  thank you! reading thru now

PerttiA

You didn't mention, which drive are we talking about. Drives A: and B: have traditionally been floppy drives, and I don't think one gets very far with 1.2MB or 1.44MB capacities 

The number 1 question is, is anything currently installed on C-drive, or is everything, DS and all your content installed there?

If they are on some other drive than C, you can just copy whatever that's on the drive to a bigger one and change the drive designations so that the bigger one gets the same drive letter than the smaller one had and you don't have to make any changes inside DS and/or DIM, they don't notice that anything has changed.

sunnyjei

PerttiA said:

You didn't mention, which drive are we talking about. Drives A: and B: have traditionally been floppy drives, and I don't think one gets very far with 1.2MB or 1.44MB capacities 

The number 1 question is, is anything currently installed on C-drive, or is everything, DS and all your content installed there?

If they are on some other drive than C, you can just copy whatever that's on the drive to a bigger one and change the drive designations so that the bigger one gets the same drive letter than the smaller one had and you don't have to make any changes inside DS and/or DIM, they don't notice that anything has changed.

This seemed almost too KISS and exactly what I wanted to try but not sure if that will mess up more than just daz- but I guess I should look into it. Have you tried renaming a drive and it actually working? (Worried as the user changing the drive name might  just be cosmetic and that behind the scenes nothing really changes). I didn't know about drive B and A typically being floppy as I've had an external Drive A for a while. The drives in question are actually a little bit bigger than 1.2/1.44 mb, thankfully ;) They are Drives F (the old one) and the new one is Drive G and both are external.

PerttiA

I have changed drive letters countless of times when I have changed drives to bigger ones, but when getting a bigger drive was getting too expensive, I found other ways around the problem.
Changing drive letters is done in "Computer Management->Storage->Disk Management", Select a drive and right-click, select "Change Drive Letter and Paths.". The drive letter you want to give a drive, has to be not in use when you make the change (first rename the old drive or remove it from the computer)

The other ways;
a) One can make (map) a drive to a folder on an other drive with just the standard tools that come with windows. Whatever is put on that folder, will physically reside on the new drive and not the old one. Everything looks normal to windows and programs and don't need any changes to paths or anything. Tools to do this can be found in "Computer Management->Storage->Disk Management"
b) Sysinternals Junction can be downloaded from Microsoft (for free), and it lets one to move any folder on any drive to any other drive or folder on the computer, also without windows or the programs understanding that anything has changed. Microsoft also uses this to create many 'dummy' folders in windows.

Edit; Sometimes (rarely) it is possible that windows changes the drive letters on it's own, that is why I have included the drive letters also in the names of the drives, just to make sure I know which drive is meant to be assigned to which letter, for example "SSD900E_E" is the fifth (E) 900GB SSD drive on the system and should be assigned to drive letter E (_E)

sunnyjei

PerttiA said:

I have changed drive letters countless of times when I have changed drives to bigger ones, but when getting a bigger drive was getting too expensive, I found other ways around the problem.
Changing drive letters is done in "Computer Management->Storage->Disk Management", Select a drive and right-click, select "Change Drive Letter and Paths.". The drive letter you want to give a drive, has to be not in use when you make the change (first rename the old drive or remove it from the computer)

The other ways;
a) One can make (map) a drive to a folder on an other drive with just the standard tools that come with windows. Whatever is put on that folder, will physically reside on the new drive and not the old one. Everything looks normal to windows and programs and don't need any changes to paths or anything. Tools to do this can be found in "Computer Management->Storage->Disk Management"
b) Sysinternals Junction can be downloaded from Microsoft (for free), and it lets one to move any folder on any drive to any other drive or folder on the computer, also without windows or the programs understanding that anything has changed. Microsoft also uses this to create many 'dummy' folders in windows.

Edit; Sometimes (rarely) it is possible that windows changes the drive letters on it's own, that is why I have included the drive letters also in the names of the drives, just to make sure I know which drive is meant to be assigned to which letter, for example "SSD900E_E" is the fifth (E) 900GB SSD drive on the system and should be assigned to drive letter E (_E)

Oh thank you! That's a lot of great info and I am going to try the easiest one first once I finish with the suggestion to use robocopy to copy the contents of the old drive to the new. They are all external drives except for Drives C and D. I wonder if I were to turn the pc off, remove (old) drive F, turn on and then rename (new) Drive G to Drive F using the system management step above if that would work? I have both Dim and Studio installed on (old) drive F and would love it if I could just rename the new drive to that and everything work/play nicely. Fingers crossed.

PerttiA

sunnyjei said:

I wonder if I were to turn the pc off, remove (old) drive F, turn on and then rename (new) Drive G to Drive F using the system management step above if that would work? 

That should work just fine 

sunnyjei

PerttiA said:

That should work just fine 

Very tentatively, as in not trying to jinx myself, going to say the robocoping of the drive and renaming it seems to have worked. It took several hours to copy so I am hoping it got everything and that it isn't still referencing in some way the old drive since I haven't deleted anything there yet. Thank you all SO MUCH for the help! Much, much appreciated!

AgitatedRiot

I finally had to move everything to my HHD; My 4TB NVme was starting to fill up. But, I had everything installed in one folder, and it seemed easy to get everything to work.