I thought Id backup my P4 RUNTIME (I just had a bad experience with losing some other files) and I discovered my RUNTIME is 3.91 GIG (and growing)!. Is there a simple way I save this mnountain of files? Help!

This is a problem that will be familiar to many of us long-time users. My own Poser directory is over 7Gb and growing. I'm lucky enough to have obtained a brand new computer recently. My old one is now networked to this one and is used purely as storage. Anything new that I d/l and install also goes to the old system as a backup. This won't be of much use to most users though. Before getting the new system I was using CDs to backup individual folders from Poser. Maps on 3 Cds, Geometries split across 2 Cds. The figures and props folders are way too big for this though. I'll be interested in seeing how others cope with this too.

I just had to back mine up less than a month ago and it was 5.13 gigs in Runtime and the gods only know how much elsewhere in my Graphics Files. I split things up, labeled my CDs clearly and ran them through my CD organizer program before we reformatted the HD and upgraded the OS. Turned out that no files were lost, but now I have a 27 CD back-up, which causes me to sleep better at night :) (Except for tonight, obviously, since it's 4:15 AM here ;)

My HD ran out of space and I bought a external 80 GB HD for about 150. (around $230 US) I am happy with it and when I get a new puter in about a year (If I'm lucky) It will make transferring my system a lot easier. You can get smaller external HD a bit cheaper and they would be good for backups. Alex

With runtime folders on one of my systems at 27.9 gig and climbing I realized real quick that an external HD was going to be the only practical way to back it up. I also make sure that my individual pz3 scene files are backed over to CD-RWs immediately. Between complete backups if I lose everything on the HD I will at least have the pz3s after everything is rebuilt or reloaded. My pz3s change the most often, of course. So, I guess my advice is get an external HD and backup your pz3 scene files daily. I just went through my system last week and cleared away a few gigs of stuff I hadn't used in quite awhile. I learned that that should be at least a quarterly project. You'd be amazed at how much stuff just sits there never or rarely used. But I've always been a pack rat. ;-) Take care, be well, keep flying. casamerica

If I get a external HD and move my files there, and the system crashes, my files will remain intact? No corrupted files etc? I won't lose anything.

My Runtime is 15.6 GB. Ouch. Your files should retain their integrity if the system crashes, but like anything in life, it's not a certainty. Put it this way... your files always have a chance of corrupting whether or not they are on an external drive. It depends on the OS you're using, the nature and cause of the crash, and about a million other factors. Sorry there's no simple answer. I'd say a qualified "Probably" to your question. FWIW, if you're using a PC, I heartily recommend using one of the NT based OSs, NT, 2000, XP. The file locking and security is much better than 98 et al. I moved all my Poser and related stuff to a removeable 120 GB drive a few months ago. Not only does my whole system run a shade faster now, but I freed up masses of space on C:. I've had no crashes (except for two power dropouts in one night) and no problems with it at all. Poser is pretty much "Drag and drop" when it comes to relocating files; it doesn't (AFAIK) write to the registry, so you can put it where you wish. All I did was backup all my files, then cut and paste the whole shooting match over to the new drive. A quick run through with Correct Reference and I was good to go. IDE drives are relatively inexpensive at the moment (unless you live in Brazil, as ilona will attest), so it's worth buying something quite hefty. You know the drill, always buy at least twice as big as you think you will need. I can't stress this too highly... A CD burner is an absolute MUST. Backup your files regularly, and DO NOT EVER trust rewritable CDs for your files. They are not reliable, but in any case, non-rewritable CDs are cheap enough to not worry about; they cost less than audio cassettes, after all. Remember, if you lose your data, the only person to blame is yourself. As the saying goes, there are only 3 important things to remember... Backup Backup Backup

Try 10 gigs...lol And I don't even have everything installed. Marque

I've been archiving Poser d/ls for over a year now and have nearly 30 CDs of stuff. I only put into the runtime folder what I need for the moment, and it's kept my RT consistently under 800 megs.

Smart Joey, can a exterior HD be moved from one computer to another. For example: I buy a new computer, and (after a restore), I dump my old clunker. I install Poser 4 on the new computer, can I use the runtime on my exterior HD? I'd only install data files on the ext. HD.

I back up the zipped files soon after downloading. They are on a number of CDs and I can reinstall anything if I lost it.

Phily -- sure. The Runtime doesn't kick in till the appl is running, so you could put the RT folder in anytime you wanted.

Thanks everybody. PBoost? somebody mention it before, it is some sort of file sorter? I know my runtime is small compared to some. but I'm still getting lost try to find a particular item. Some props are in figures some mats are in props, intials indicating item name, and I get a headache trying to figure out things. Would PBoost help, how, and is it complicated?

Well, my poser directory has topped 16 gig!!! I finally just bought a WD External 120 Gig Drive for backup purposes! Expensive but with the Firewire connection, it's well worth it!

I just zipped up the subdirectories of my runtime & burned them to CD that way. Cut the sizes of all the directories but the texture dir by more than 50%.