DAZ Install Manager Help Please

Charlie Judge

I have suffered an external hard drive failure and lost nearly all my DAZ Studio items. How can I tell DIM that they are no longer installed so that I can use DIM to download and install them?

Note  there are over 39,000 itms that are lost; so using DIM to try and unistall them is not very practical. 

nemesis10

My own temptation would be to copy the contents of the ManifestFiles folder out of InstallManager and place all of them in a new folder elsewhere, empty the ManifestFiles folder and delete the originals of those manifest files, and reopen DIM and download all. Those files tell DIM if you have installed or not.

namffuak

Start DIM in offline mode; then click Settings -> advanced settings and select Installation.

Note the entry for Manifest Archive. The files in this directory tell DIM what is installed and where.

Shut DIM down and rename this directory; start DIM, online this time - and you should no longer have anything installed.

ArtAngel

You may want to hang onto the hardrive and not format it for old plugins etc. Hopefully you made backups of Daz Studio versions because as you probably know, via DIM or the product library, you will only get 4.23.x Pro and lastest beta of DAZ Studio. I managed to hobble my ext WD drive to get stuff from it via ice gel packing it top and bottom, every 5 minutes to keep it from getting too hot. Very painsful time thief. Now I use some Samsung SSDs but mostly Crucial SSDs.

Charlie Judge

Thanks all. I may have to rename the manifest directory and just start over. However, if at all possible, I would like to keep my current version of DAZ Studio and postgre.

jjoyner

Keeping backups is definitely the way to go.  I also download anything that I buy in the online stores to keep as backup.  I keep the downloaded zip folders on one external hard drive (F) and install to a different external hard drive (E).  I also manually install content on a third external hard drive (K) to keep as backup to the primary content drive.  That saved me last year when I accidentally dropped my main content drive (E:) with all of my Daz Studio and Poser content.  I renamed the backup drive (K:) drive as E: and was back in business in no time.  I bought another external hard drive to replace the backup one that was no my main content drive.