DIM, bullet dodging
wscottart
Posts: 442
I feel Like I dodged a bullet today.
My drive was rapidly filling up and I was freaking out. I backed up all of my runtimes, big mess that it has become. I began using the daz installer to uninstall/install and rebuild my runtimes. I began putting all of my 4.2 files into an easily navigable runtime for instance along with all those great morphs etc.
Everything was looking nice, then I decided to remove all the installer files to another drive and wipe them off my original drive. As test afterwards, I used the Daz intaller to uninstall some boots to see if I could still use the installer to rearrange my runtimes. I was working offline. After uninstalling BOOOOM! the boots were gone and I had no way to reconnect to the installer file through DIM offline. To my delightful suprise the files installer appeared when I logged in live. WOW WOW WOw!
Question #1 becomes: Can I trust this, and delete the installers, or should I just make the installers download to my backup drive?
Question #2 becomes: How can I get DIM to recognize files ( the installers) if I move them to another drive, or can I move them back to the original folder only as need to help me reorganize my runtimes.
This is incredibly complicated stuff sorry for the long post.
Also lots of problems with the new Daz Studio not showing a lot of my pose files, but I am more worried about cleaning up runtimes at the moment, wish I had waited before updating that one. Don't even want ot imagine what this has done to My Carrara.
Peace and Happy Rendering!
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Comments
I can only help you with question 1.
I've seen enough content sites - free and paid - disappear that I don't trust them to keep my purchases for me any more. I'd advise keeping an archived copy of all your downloaders on your backup drive(s), just in case.
Another vote here for keeping all your installers/downloads!
Whoa, don't EVER delete your last copy of something, and promise yourself that hard disk space (or SSD, as appropriate) is a cost of doing business in this world. 1TB hard drives can be had for less than $50.
I get this in the music world too, where something goes out of support or whole companies go out of business. I use some hybrid (part software/part hardware) instruments from a company called Native Instruments, and they use a DIM-like downloader/installer called "Service Center".
Just Friday I had to reinstall a driver for an old and unsupported NI USB hardware controller called "Kore 2" that had mysteriously stopped working. I thought it was a USB cable, hub, or (GASP!) controller problem. They don't make that controller or the software anymore, eek!
Luckily for me, NI is still going strong and they still have copies of all the old drivers and software. Service Center found the driver in my account, then downloaded and installed it. I'm not sure if my download folder had an old copy, so I feel like I really lucked out this time and you can bet your sweet bippy I'm not going to let this driver get deleted!
Companies can go away fast, so keep copies of everything.
I agree with robkelk, buy a 2 to 4 gig external drive like a passport or western digital which plugs in USB to your computer. .and use it for storage and back ups it will save you alot of frustration later on when or if you need to re install products that maybe be lost to web sites archiving older merchandise or for some other reason they may have. you can also keep shadow copies of your runtime on the external drive as well which will save you tons of time re installing everything again.
I am most certainly keeping the installers on my backup drive.
The real question is can I move them back onto the main drive for the DIM installer to recognize them when I go trying to reorder my runtimes. The point is I don't want them taking up space on my drive, and I really would'nt want to go installing these things manually like the good ole day unless absolutely necessary.
Reality is I 've already moved them to the drive, and for now DIM still intalls the items from online since I don't know how to make the program recognize that the installer were moved..
I am configuring the DIM installer to now save intallers to the backup, so hopefully in the future this becomes a mute point.
At any rate my runtimes are now cleaned up and helping me enjoy creating instead of searching and searching and searching.
Important sanity-preservation note: DIM has settings that point to where the downloaded installers have been stored. THIS CAN BE CHANGED. If you don't, and you move the installers, DIM doesn't know you've downloaded that installer.
There are three vital settings you should always keep in mind when you're digging around in anything to do with the DIM; the download location for the installers, the content location for the unpacked installed files, and the program installation location. These are only defaults and nothing more — they can be changed if you need to, e.g. if you run out of space on your main hard drive and want to re-install on an external drive, as you have.
Also, make sure the Content Directory Manager in D|S is pointing to the same folder that DIM has installed your content into. This is now supposed to happen automatically if you're setting up a completely new installation, otherwise the two programs do not talk to each other. It's much too easy to end up with DIM installing files to its new default location, and D|S trying to read the files from its old default location. (This might be the cause of your missing pose files; DIM has installed them, but D|S is looking in the wrong place.)
To set DIM to download to a different location, click the gear (Settings) icon in the upper right corner, and on the Downloads tab set the new location at the top. Alternatively, I download to one location and then manually move the packages to my backup location.
Awesome everyone thanks for the responses.
On a further note I figured out how restore my missing pose files in Daz Studio.
Right click on missing pose, choose show in content library.
Right click on the missing pose, choose Database: prefered file and choose the correct path to my pose file. Just like the post above Daz Studio didn't know where to find the file for some reason although most of the poses from that product were showing up properly to begin with.
After a restart Daz Studio now knows where to find the correct file.