External hard drive
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External hard drive
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I have 3 questons about external hard drives.
Can I transfer ALL my Daz content on an external hard drives?
Would it slow Daz Studio ?
Does the way the external hard drive is connected to my pc make a difference (ex: usb vs other ways) ?
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Comments
You can definitely have all your DS content on an external drive, I've had mine on a USB drive since I've started using DS loooong ago.
I have mine on an external USB SSD. All you do is copy your Daz content folders then add them as base directories on the new path. It doesn't slow it down at all if you're using USB 3. Probably doesn't if it's only USB 2.
There's a recent discussion over here
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/4872726
TL;DR
Yes, yes, and what other methods did you have in mind?
Yep. Takes a while, but easily doable.
Yes, though the extreme to which you'll notice it depends on your situation. I went from an internal raid to an external 6TB drive and there was a definite slowdown... but I have nearly 4TB of installed 3D assets. I WAS planning on moving everything again to the best external 4TB SSD I could find, but I've since re-thought everything in terms of all the other programs I'm running and am looking at buying a new top of the line computer instead and splitting files across multiple SSDs.
Yes, especially if you're using older tech or hubs, though you'll probably see no discernable difference if you using USB 3, e-SATA or Thunderbolt.
Daz Studio let us have more than one library. Is it recommanded to split content in more than one library or is it better to keep content in one library ?
I've got mine split several ways and have no problem within DAZ Studio itself, but be aware that it CAN problems with some add-ons and utilities.
For those who say it is or can be slower on a hard drive, I'd like to know how much longer (few seconds, few minutes or more) and when (when opening Daz studio, when loading a character or posing it, when rendering or in any circonstances).
That's going to be impossible to say given all the variables. Which external drive, hooked up how, how much content are you installing across how many drives, how fast is your computer to begin with, etc., etc. I can tell you that I saw a significant slowdown in load time for items in the larger sub-libraries, but a lot of that is just due to how how much slower it is for a inexpensive Seagate 6TB drive designed for back-ups to search across compared to the raid I initially installed them on. It's long enough to be noticeable and annoying when loading new items, especially Genesis 3 and 8 F where there are a zillion morphs loading..(Yes, the guys take a lot less time getting ready. Insert the sexist comment of your choice here.) However, at the time I did the transfer I was suspecting that my RAID was about to fail and there weren't any 4TB SSD's available (at least at a price I wanted to pay), so I opted to shunt everything over onto the Seagate so that at least I wouldn't lose anything. It was never meant to be a permanent solution, though, and the only reason I haven't finished the transfer to a faster SSD is that I had the epihany that my current rendering computer is getting on in years and windows 7 Ultra support is about to go away, so it just makes more sense to start shopping for a new computer and put up with the slower loads until then.