How to move a Library?

ac_mr_blonde

Hey folks! I just got a new SDD and I wanted to move my Daz library onto it, which I had assumed would not be difficult, but I can't find any way to do that? Any advice, or are there existing threads I couldn't find on the topic?

SofaCitizen

You can just move the whole folder across from your old drive to the new one using Windows Explorer. Then, update the path in DIM (assuming you use that) and afterwards in Daz Studio, under Content Library, remove the old location from both Daz Studio Formats and Poser Formats and add the new location to both.

There might be a few edge-case issues, for example if you install to multiple libraries in DIM then it might get confused when you have an updated product.

If you use Daz Connect then this approach may or may not work.

ac_mr_blonde

SofaCitizen said:

and afterwards in Daz Studio, under Content Library, remove the old location from both Daz Studio Formats and Poser Formats and add the new location to both.

And does that take care of Smart content too? I'm hazy on how Smart content relates to the content library, and where it's info comes from.

 

SofaCitizen

Smart Content is driven by the CMS which is a database package that is run alongside Daz Studio. Assuming you install products using DIM then it is populated from the contents of an XML file that is part of the product package. If you install a product manually then it will not exist in the CMS unless you explicitly add it.

Smart Content only cares about relative paths. So for example, if we take one of the assets from this week's Daz+ freebie products: "MJF123 Tradiscantia Plant 01 Cream". When looking at this asset on my machine it says in the info tab that the filename is "MJF123 Tradiscantia Plant 01 Cream.duf" and the absolute path is "/Volumes/Design/DAZ 3D/Library/props/plants/mjf tradiscantia plants/mjf123 tradiscantia plant 01 cream.duf". However, the record for this in the CMS database (Smart Content) has the path saved as "props/Plants/MJF Tradiscantia Plants". This is because Daz Studio appends the filename to this path and looks for this within each of your mapped base directories (in my case this has matched the second entry "/Volumes/Design/DAZ 3D/Library/").

Therefore, provided you copy the entire base directory from one physical location to the other, then it should "just work" when you remove the old base directory and add the new one.

As mentioned, DIM does store the absolute path in it's manifest files. I believe this is primarily for the feature to install updates to the same base directory when you have more than one configured. Therefore, if you only have the one base library known to DIM then this may not be an issue.

ac_mr_blonde

SofaCitizen said:

Smart Content is driven by the CMS which is a database package that is run alongside Daz Studio. Assuming you install products using DIM then it is populated from the contents of an XML file that is part of the product package. If you install a product manually then it will not exist in the CMS unless you explicitly add it.

Smart Content only cares about relative paths. So for example, if we take one of the assets from this week's Daz+ freebie products: "MJF123 Tradiscantia Plant 01 Cream". When looking at this asset on my machine it says in the info tab that the filename is "MJF123 Tradiscantia Plant 01 Cream.duf" and the absolute path is "/Volumes/Design/DAZ 3D/Library/props/plants/mjf tradiscantia plants/mjf123 tradiscantia plant 01 cream.duf". However, the record for this in the CMS database (Smart Content) has the path saved as "props/Plants/MJF Tradiscantia Plants". This is because Daz Studio appends the filename to this path and looks for this within each of your mapped base directories (in my case this has matched the second entry "/Volumes/Design/DAZ 3D/Library/").

Therefore, provided you copy the entire base directory from one physical location to the other, then it should "just work" when you remove the old base directory and add the new one.

As mentioned, DIM does store the absolute path in it's manifest files. I believe this is primarily for the feature to install updates to the same base directory when you have more than one configured. Therefore, if you only have the one base library known to DIM then this may not be an issue.

Thank you! That made it very clear :)