What should I expect migrating from Mac to Windows?
colongraphics
Posts: 78
Good morning! I am making the transition from older OS X Macs to a newer Windows 10 Pro machine, but I am unsure what might get lost during the migration. Specifically, will I be able to use character, scenes, and .duf files previously created on Daz Studio for Mac on a Windows machine running its version of the same program, or should I expect to start from scratch? Should I expect any complications downloading my purchases using the Windows version of DIM? Not a show stopper, just want to know what to expect. Thanks in advance!
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First : go for Windows 11. https://tb.rg-adguard.net/public.php (user friendly UI to download ISO from official Microsoft sources. Then Rufus + USB to get a bootable removable media to install Windows easily).
Second, what to expect? Expect to have a hard-on every morning at the thought that you made the best decision of your life. Especially if it's for Daz: buy an Nvidia GPU, prefer a slower card with more VRAM than a faster card with less VRAM. (3090 RTX with 24GB of VRAM is probably the best value for money today). And you'll be the happiest man on Earth.
About your Daz content worries : don't have any. It's exactly the same files. You could store your Daz content on the Cloud and share its access to both a PC and a Mac.
N.B : Some plugins that require a set up would need to be reinstalled and/or reactivated. But that's about all. You install Daz on your new PC, link the Content Directory Manager to your Daz library(ies) folder(s). And you're good to go.
I can only confirm the words of hansolocambo. Three years ago I switched back from a Mac to a Windows machine because Apple and NVIDIA no longer want to play together. The switch went smoothly and I didn't have to change anything in the files. At first I had Windows 10, but later switched to Windows 11. Here there were some problems, but after I had renewed all drivers of the mainboard and the chipset, DAZ Studio also runs under Windows 11 without problems. I have not regretted the step.
Since I save my data on external hard drives, I initially had the problem that I could no longer use the data under Windows. Here HFS+ for Windows by Paragon Software helped me very well. In the meantime I have formatted my hard drives to NTFS.
GUID Partition Table (GPR) and New Technology File System (NTFS) together allow among tons of other advantges (Speed, compression, encryption, etc) a virtually infinite amount of Terrabytes per hard drive. Sky's the only limit. So, good move you made ;)
Compression and harddrives... Doesn't sound like a good idea. I thought those ideas were buried and forgotten a quarter of a century ago.
it's not because it might not be useful for most of us that it's not ultra necessary for others. Forget about those details which are far from being an exhaustive list of the advantages, only important thing being (especially for someone coming from Mac probably) is : NTFS / GPR. It's been and will be for a long time the best combo to prepare an hard drive before it receives its first bits of data.
Make sure you copy your user files. I am not certain how they are copied from one runtime to another so they will appear in Daz Smart Content, that is why when I changed from one Windows macine to another Windows macine I lost mine.
Also, if you keep your download folder of Daz assets on your Mac, you might copy that rather than redownload it. I am not certain the DIM download files are the same though. They should be zip files but some may be .exe
Thank you, gents. Very helpful! I have not used a Windows machine for personal use in 15 years, so let's see how this goes!
Wanted to revisit this as I'm facing the same situation. I have a new PC and downloade IM and Daz and much of the content I need immediately. Now the real test is copying over actual files to see if they will open on the new PC and utilize the content in the same way as before. Could this be as easy as emailing myself the Daz files from the Mac and then downloading that file to the new PC?
As long as you have the required content installed then yes, that should work
Thanks. But now I realize that those Daz files are huge...200 plug MG. Too big to email. Is there another way to transfer files from a Mac hard drive to a PC?
A thumbdrive or other external drive with a generic format (not Mac or Windows specific) should do the job. Even a phone, if it has the space.
thanks. I'll give that a try. The small files I was able to email to myself open on the new machine, but there's a long list of missing files. Is the problem the file structure? Do I need to replicate the Library/runtime/etc file structure on the new machine?
As long as the files are correctly installed on both machines (not oen content directory inside another) then the name and location of the content directory don't matter, but correctly installed does mean they need to be in the Data and Runtime folders (for assets and textures) immediately inside the content directory - the location of the user-facing files is usually less critical, though if theya re wrong it probably means the others are too.
I don't recall the exact steps, but about a year ago, I replicated my DAZ installation from my iMac M1 system to a then new HP Omen 40L PC.
I used a portable 2TB SSD drive to temporarily store my DAZ data from the Mac, preserving the folder structures.
On the PC, I installed DS on the C: drive and then used the portable SSD (D:) to test with.
Once I was sure everything worked correctly (it did), I installed an internal 4TB M.2 SSD in the PC and copied everything as-is from the portable drive to the new D: (M.2 drive.)
Everything's been working great since then, though I still primarily use the Mac to set up my characters and do most of my renders. When I need some heavy lifting, I'll walk over to the PC with a thumbdrive containing what I was just working on (on the Mac.)
That lightweight gaming PC, HP Omen 40L, with a 3060 (12GB VRAM) is really, really, really nice for Iray rendering compared to the Mac. Very quick, as most of my test renders finish in about 10 seconds (give or take) compared to a minute or more on the Mac (usually more.)
I hope you have a successful migration to the PC! I use my PC solely for DAZ and some finishing work in Photoshop Elements.
Lee
Thanks. I have Daz installed on the new machine and have copied my Daz Library to an external drive and then to the new machine's drive. I need to either mimic the file structure or tweak the manage content settings to ensure Daz can find the files it needs.
Hmm...still having the age old problem of migrating to a new machine. I dowloaded a fresh copy of daz. Copied my library to a external drive then dumped it onto the new PC's drive. But when I load a file I still get a laundry list of assets that Daz can't find. I even added the new library in database manage panel. But I still get the laundry list. Any suggestions?
Where is the content (the path to the Data and Runtime folders) and what are your content directory settings?
The program is in c: , Program Files, Daz 3d, DAZStudio4.
Various project files are in c: , users, my name, projects folder
The library I transferred is in c: , users, myname, documents, My Daz 3d Library (where the data and runtime files are)
So is c:/users/myname/documents/My Daz 3d Library/ set as a Daz Studio Format content directory?
In the Content Directory Manager and "Current Directories" there are a few items listed. "CMS Cluster Directory," "Daz Connect Data," "Daz Studio Formats," and "Poser Formats" (irrelevant as I don't use Poser).
Under "Daz Studio Formats" is listed c:/users/myname/documents/My Daz 3d Library/ along with c:/users/myname/documents/Daz 3D/ Studio/My Library.
So, I do see a lot of items in the Smart Content panel, but I still get the laundry list of missing items when loading a project I created on the former machine.