Looking for the proper way to transfer files to a new computer
animation101us_84e135afbe
Posts: 34
Hello,
I am using DAZ3D 4.6
I am trying to transfer my DAZ 3D and poser content from my dying laptop to my new desktop.
I thought I could just transfer them to an external hard drive and acess them via a standard system-wide search via DAZ3D content manager. It seemed to have found them BUT I am getting many errors when loading. It can not find many (if not all) the dsf files.
Some assets needed to load the files were missing
the figures load as primitive cube shapes.
This seems to be a problem with the newer .duf files. The older. daz files load. Some load with an error message that not all files could be found BUT the figure(s) load.
Can anyone direct me to the proper way to migrate and find libraries in DAZ4.6.
Thanks for any help.
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Comments
Possibly you are missing data files. Make sure you also copy the very first mapped DS content folder (which you can see in the Content Library tab, menu, Content Directory Manager) when you transfer your files.
This does work (I did it a couple of years ago) but you have to define the "them" you transferred. The path in the error pic shows you have a "Saved Characters" folder. Is this separate from where your content is installed? Is it mapped as a content location? The old .daz and new .duf scene files don't store everything for a scene, they must refer to the texture files (stored in one of your mapped Runtime folders, which is part of your installed content) and the converted-to-DS-format files stored in a data folder (also part of your installed content). If you missed copying part of your content folders, especially the files stored in the data folders, then you get exactly the kind of errors you describe.
Thanks for the answers!
I think something went wrong with the transfer to the external drive.
I checked the file folder sizes on the old laptop verses the external drive and found a large size difference. (over a gig of difference!) (what the hell?)
I am going to try a redo and see if everything comes across this time.
make sure you copy all the DS mapped data folders, not just the first one. I lost several years or work a few months back because I only did the top one so some of my old scenes load in pieces or sometimes nothing at all.
StratDragon, do you know why this is the case? I might just be getting incredibly lucky by accident, because in fact I do back up all my mapped folders. However I was only doing that to save reinstalling time, and I have been deleting them (except for the first one) occasionally to do reinstalls, so now I wonder if I've been slowly shooting myself in the foot. I had thought that the first mapped folder was always the one used to store the data files and was the only truly important one, but am I misunderstanding how this works?
It's the first mapped location that's used to store /data/ files for scenes saved and converted from Poser format. Other mapped locations used to install D|S content that's never been in Poser format will have their own /data/ folders — the automatic selection of the first mapped folder is for saving the scene for the first time in D|S format ONLY. Loading a previously saved scene (or a scene installed from a DAZ download) will search all mapped content locations for the appropriate /data/ files. If you installed the item to a different mapped location, that's where the /data/ files will be installed as well. This is why it's vitally important, if you're backing up your content and you have more than one content location, you must back up every part of all the content locations.
It's the first mapped location that's used to store /data/ files for scenes saved and converted from Poser format. Other mapped locations used to install D|S content that's never been in Poser format will have their own /data/ folders — the automatic selection of the first mapped folder is for saving the scene for the first time in D|S format ONLY. Loading a previously saved scene (or a scene installed from a DAZ download) will search all mapped content locations for the appropriate /data/ files. If you installed the item to a different mapped location, that's where the /data/ files will be installed as well. This is why it's vitally important, if you're backing up your content and you have more than one content location, you must back up every part of all the content locations.
Forgive me if I'm being confused, I'm still a bit hazy... So are you saying that the data folders in the 2nd-Nth mapped folders are actually a mix of files from the original data folder that installed there with the product before I did anything, and also files created as a result of DS scenes that I have created? If so, and if I want to completely delete and reinstall a product (aka, one Runtime/Content folder assigned to one product), how do I separate out the parts of the data folder I need to save for my scenes while also deleting the parts that are part of the original product install?
The other way round. If you have always had the same location defined as your first mapped folder, then every saved-from-Poser-format scene will put its newly created /data/ files in that location's /data/ folder.
If you install to any other mapped locations, the /data/ files for that installation will be in that other location's /data/ folder.
There should be no mixing in these extra /data/ folders, the only place you should have a mix of converted and installed /data/ files is in your first mapped location. Note that this means converted scene files saved in other mapped locations will also save their /data/ files to the first mapped location.
This seems to put me back at my original assumption, that only the first mapped folder needs to be backed up. (although obviously the products installed in the other folders, even if not backed up, would need to be reinstalled there or somewhere in order to actually use them). How did StratDragon loose work by not copying these other folders?
Probably the same thing I've done over the years — I've been using D|S ever since the very first betas, so I have /data/ folders with saved converted scenes in more than one of my content locations. One for D|S4, one for D|S3, and one for all the versions before that. I've always been very careful to back up all the /data/ folders in every mapped location every time I do a backup or transfer to another machine, though, so I've never been caught out.
Except for the one time my hideously-bloated-with-millions-of-teeny-tiny-files /data/ folder blew up the filesystem in Win98... :red:
This seems to put me back at my original assumption, that only the first mapped folder needs to be backed up. (although obviously the products installed in the other folders, even if not backed up, would need to be reinstalled there or somewhere in order to actually use them). How did StratDragon loose work by not copying these other folders?
my theory at this point was I have all my data on an internal drive that is external to my system so my content drive is not subject to caching and swap files. Each time I do an install it's a custom install, however I think I installed something content wise that decided it wanted to map a data file back to my system drive and top leveled my a new data folder. Follow that with a catastrophic system HD failure and a restore of Windows, a reinstall of Studio and when I go to fire up old projects after remapping what I thought was my data folder (on the drive that was not affected by mechanical failure) I'm getting error messages on tons of projects. Searching the log files and trying to find the data files uncovers nothing on my data drive so I remount the dead drive, get it to spin and start searching blocks and I find a data folder. Some of the data was recovered but most of it was not and it's not as simple as reloading the item and resaving which I think worked in DS3 because that has brought no luck. So what I'm saying is back ALL those folders up, and consolidate them into one folder then remap that folder if you have multiple data folders spanning multiple drives which is what happened to my without my knowledge.
Hello everyone,
So I Matched the files on the external drive with the ones on my laptop.
I am running DAZ3D using the external drive on my desktop.
I am still getting the same problem though.
When I load a previously made .duf file I get a large list of missing .dsf files.
Then the figure loads as primitives:
I remember previous versions of DAZ3D promting me when it couldn't find the files. This seems to be gone from the latest version. Too bad.
Any Ideas as to how to correct this problem?
Please realize that tho I am above an average computer user, I don't always follow (in fact it makes me feel very dim that I don't know what a "DIM" is)
Thanks all!
I re-read SpottedKitty's first responce and a Light went on (finally) checked what was suggested and now all is well.
Thank you all for your time I'm up and running on my new system!
Just happy I could help. What finally worked? There's a lot of weird and wonderful ways content folder mapping can glitch, the more we know about working fixes, the less banging-head-against-the-wall there is the next time someone has problems.
SpottedKitty,
Well as best I can tell;
Even though the directories where on the external drive all along, the search for content on all drives did not find the DAZ3D/Studio/MyLibrary or the DAZ3D/Studio/content on the external drive only on the C drive.
Once I manually added them to the content manager everything works fine.
Thanks again.
Ah yes, that happens sometimes — the only way to get D|S to see a location is to enter it manually in the Preferences. Shouldn't happen, I know, but sometimes programs do Weird Stuff™ just to make sure we're still paying attention. :roll:
Something related to watch out for is an automatic search finding stuff you don't want it to — some people organise their content using "inactive" locations for categories of stuff they might use in another project, but not in the scene they're doing right now, and swap out active ones as needed. This can lead to the sudden appearance of eleventy-kazillion new content folders, which might come as a bit of an unexpected surprise...