Ok after a time being a poser fanatic its unavoidable that you end up with 454647475687646352 million .zip files and the like associated with poser and if your like me just dont want to loose any!! So my question is...How on earth do you back all these up (to cd for example) and somehow have any clue what cd a particular file is on without spending all the time you should be spending on poser entering every file in a data base? Help please!! Im tired of loosing files!! LOL

I have a CD labeled Vicki with folders on it for clothes Accessories Characters Morphs Texture Maps I do the the same for Michael and P4.....Then I have separate cd's for; Household items plants vehicles Buildings Scenes misc I have the same filing system on my HD so when I down load something it goes in the correct folder and subsequently is burned to the correct cd....it's all in organization.

I do mine by source. I have CDs for Daz, RDNA, Poser World and Poser Style plus ones for Fantasy, Vicky, Mill Girls, Mike etc. I also have CDs for my pictures (photoshop ones take up so much space if you want to keep them in layers) and backgrounds etc. Thank goodness that CDs are cheap. I am also about to buy a new second hard-drive - and I thought that I would never fill 40 gb!

I haven't gotten to Dizzie's level of organization yet, but it's going to have to happen soon here. Right now I do put things that I have bought in seperate directories, freebies in another by various site, like Daz, RuntimeDNA, Renderosity. I use WhereIsIt file cataloger to catalog my CDs, it's quick and eazy as putting in the CD and suckin up the directory listing. There are a few catalogin applications out there, try a few demo's and see what suits your needs. Someone recently sugjested saving the thumbnail in the directory that you save zip to, I'm thinking about starting to do this, as I can't remember what SHFT_2341_02.zip would be for the life of me haha.

I burn them then use Directory Print to store the titles when I "need" something I search for file containing....

I catalogue by month. So every month I start a new folder on my harddisk. In it I have a standard folder tree for Poser files - Clothing, Poses, Props etc. For each new freebie or commercial item I create a subfolder in the right place, with appropriate nae - Like "Vicki Yuna Hair - Maya" or some such. This way I can find everything easily, and I know who made it. I keep the entire collection separate from my Poser drive. I transfer files to Poser when I need them and have unzipped them separately. Then after each month (or several months lol) I backup. Since I've been doing it this way more or less for 5 years now, I can do searches (in Windows Explorer) and find absolutely anything.... by type of object/file, name of file, author, date, etc. I have tens of thousands of freebies set up like this in a HUGE library. I keep everything, but only install a small prcentage of it in Poser, only when I may need it. My Poser folder is already about 80 GB or so, so I need to be careful what I add :o) Oh, and I burn to DVD. CD's are hopeless, I collect more than 1 Gig per month - of just Poser stuff. Then there's all the other junk.... :] Fish

I back up every couple of weeks. BUT I keep it all on the harddrive too. All organized into categories with downloaded thumbnails and all. View with XP's explorer in thumbnail view and use XP's search to locate stuff (even inside zip files) My archive currently takes up 14.2 gigs. But that's what harddrives are for...very convenient.

Fish...how much can you get on a DVD?

I believe DVD is 4.7 GB

for the folks burning to CD... Have you guys actually tried loading files from CD??? I've tried a couple of them only to find they would not load...giving unreadable errors and so forth... I've also found that CDs made on one PC will not always work on another, and it also seems to depend on what burning program is used... Not sure why this is or if it is a widespread problem or just my bad luck, but I now test each CD I burn on my system, then on another just to be sure , and then pray they work in a year or so. Luckily one of the CDs I had problems with contained my Mike 1/2 files...DAZ was kind enough to check my purchase history and give me a download of them...DAZ comes through again :)

Dave-So,What you described is a very common problem with CD-RW type disks. While there is only one standard for burning to a CD-R disk,there are about five for CD-RW.This depends on the make of the CD drive,and not the brand of computer,or CD burning softwear used(like two different model computers from the same company may have two different CD drives,made by separate makers). Add to this the very nature of CD-RW disk make them easy to become corrupt. Don't know if this is what happen to you,but people should be aware to use only CD-R disk(not CD-RW),when archiving important info(like Poser files). SWAMP

I store by type: Characters, Props, Poses, Textures, etc. These started out for the P4 folks. The Millenium folks get their own folders, and a sub-code for what it is. A texture for Victoria gets Vicky_TXT_whateveritwasdownloadedas.zip If it was for Vicky2, then Vicky2_TXT... Sub codes are MORPH, POSES, PROP(these include clothes), FACE... This makes it easy to sort and find a specific item (at least for me). Whatever system you choose or come up with, do make sure you back it up. Oh, and for CD/R's I like IMATION brand. :)

I have a removable HD and a spare HD. From time to time, I copy my Runtime folder from 1 HD to the other. But I haven't got the fattest library around : mine is about 45 Gb. Compiler

Attached Link: http://www.haxial.com/

Since reading this thread just half an hour ago, I've found a CD cataloging app, DLed it, learned it and cataloged a huge stack of CDs....amazing for a slow computer-stuff learner and chronically disorganized artist. The program is called Haxial, works on PCs and Macs and is dead easy to learn and, in Batch mode, takes less than 30 seconds to load, read, catalog and eject each CD. I'll be sending the company $20 on payday, but it costs nothing to DL and use, and I feel as if I've just struggled free of a thick layer of clutter and confusion, which is priceless :)))

but don't you have to redo or update somehow all the CD catalogs every time you burn more stuff to the cd's?

With Haxial, all you do is to feed the new CD to it. It simply adds it to its database. The next time you do a search, the contents of the CD are included.

Patricia,I just DL Haxial.This is nice...really nice. Thanks for the tip,SWAMP

I keep track of what I buy using Excel and that helps. But, since I was having problems finding things in the Poser Library, I wrote something to create a catalog of the entire contents of my Poser Library complete with the thumbnails as a Word document. After installing new items, I use P3DOExplorer to convert and .rsr files to .png files and then run my macro to update my catalog. Works great.

bung them all onto cds and get a cataloging system for removables, just remember where you put the cd.

PabloS, actually it's only 4.2GB. The rest is for directory/file structure and the DVD format info (Joliet/ISO 9660/etc) - yes, that much!. You could probably overburn to get some more, but success will depend on how much information is needed for the structure - if you have loads of directories and files, it may end up truncating the DVD write. Back to the topic. Yes, I have my ".zips" organized by type, model, and specifics: Victoria 2.0 Character Hair Morphs Clothing Textures ... Props Furniture Weapons Clothing ... Hair ... Eyes ... Animals ... Then I just do an incremental backup of these (ones added since last DVD write) and write out a directory listing for reference. BYS

No, the capacity of a DVD is just under 4,5 GB. DVD disks say 4,7 GB on them, but would you believe the standard method they use for defining capacity is actually billions of Bytes, and not GigaBytes. So 4,7 is on the assumption that for instance a kiloByte is 1000 Bytes which it certainly is not. It is in fact 1024 Bytes :o) File system also takes some space. Dave-so: The usual solution for that problem is switch make of cd disks. Even the finest burner can have trouble with certain makes of disks, particularly rewritables. FOr instance, I can'y use Memorex - a reputable brand - on my cd-rw Plextor, which has an excellent pedigree. My Sony DVD burner has so far never failed to burn perfectly. But I always, always copy the entire contents of the disks I burn to the harddisk of another PC (to a temp dir) to be sure that every single Byte is OK. Doing that with a DVD takes a while but it's worth it. A bad backup is the worst thing in the world. Strictly speaking, you haven't backed up until you've done two copies.

Huge thanks to Patricia for pointing out Haxial. I have the same problem; stacks of CD's with mixed work, play and pure junk; too often I've either tossed something necessary or kept something useless!

Fishnose, I'll believe that. :) But, I've not had any success writing, let's say, 4.3GB (real GB) without the software complaining. Do you have the Sony DRU-500(A/AX/?)? They are nice aren't they? I'll tell you this, though. I can write K-hypermedia DVD-Rs on the Sony, but can't read them on the Sony. Read okay on other drives, but not the one that wrote it. So, I use better quality ones instead of that coaster-fodder. :) And, yes, I check my DVD archive after write against the data on hard disk for file count, directory count, and total bytes to ensure that everything was written properly. BYS

I rename all files, place them by catagory into their appropriate sub-dir and save the thumbnail also by the same name. Makes it super easy to find exactly what I need.

BYS - yup, I have the 500. Great drive isn't it :o) what with doing all formats. I just checked the available space thingy in the S/W - both Easy CD Creator Platinum and Veritas RecordNow - and it says 4488 MB. And I've been within 20 MB of that as far as I know. Can't say why this is - could have to do with sector sizes or something?... I've used about 4 different makes but I must admit I haven't tried reading them all in the same drive. I should do that of course! :] Fish

I just burn all my newer files to disk whenever I have enough to fill a cd - categorized of course. I use a cd database program to find what I want on what cd. It comes in real handy. Just type in the name of the file and voila! - it tells you just which cd it's on :o). All I have to do is scan the cd into the database right after burning then file it away. Laurie