thats it.

Rowlando

I usually burn them to a DVD or so (it would take one dual-layer or two single-layer DVDs for my current Runtime size).  To save space, you could zip folders.  I usually zip Geometries, Textures, and the individual Libraries folders separately.

Just Grab your Poser folder and copy it to an external hard drive.....if you ever need to format you can just grab your backup copy and paste it, then all you need to do is fill in the serial number and your back to the way you where.........Steve

That's also a possiblity.  Lacie makes an external USB 80GB drive for an excellent price.  Compact and quick.

I just bought a 300Gb LaCie (the Brick one, it looks so cute) and I'm right now busy copying my entire Poser drive over to that one.

If you copy the whole runtime and all, it's not even necessary to re-enter the serial, Poser doesn't store any information in the regdat. So potentially one could run Poser off a cd or DVD...

I made a micro runtime with the most essential things for my laptop on a 2Gb Pleomax drive. Add that as a new runtime and everything works just swell. Of course I did install Poser on that laptop but it could just have all been on the pleomax.

So in essence: Copying the lot to an external harddrive is the easiest way to back it up :)

Some years ago I did a spanned-on-5-cd's ACE compressed file of my runtime. It's my ultimate fallback, but it's more clunky and you can't grab single files without decompressing all of it.

Sounds like I should buy another external Hard drive my Lacie 180 Gig broke down.

I thought there might have been another way, but looks like I will have to zip my runtimes to disk

Thanks so much for your advice

Rowlando

Here also a second HDD and an external drive for the runtime(s), but DVD's for the executed DAZ and unzipped rest.
On the DVD's things are in numbered folders (D001 Victoria2, Re121 SP Morgandy, R009 BeachBaby...) with their page, promo images, evt tutorials,...
As I don't use make-up mats, I can reduce the volume of the texture folder some 50%.

One thing though: if you have that external HDD switched on all the time, it'll live even shorter that an regular HDD due to heat. So only switch it on to put and get, say, once per day.

I'd suggest an external hard drive as well.  As a matter of fact, I woud suggest copying it to 2 separate external drives in case one fails!  I lost my entire runtimes to a defective external drive.  My friend who was trying to help me recover them was in absolute fits over the amount of loss and she couldn't understand why I wasn't. (it wasn't life or death and not worth getting all worked up over).  After spending weeks reinstalling everything from scratch, the blasted drive failed again about a month later.  This time I managed to recover the data though. Now the nasty drive sits unused grinning at me, and daring me to try it again,  LMAO

Now I use CD's, my second hard drive on my desktop, and my website.

It really depends on how important the data in your runtime is to you. For really important data one surely wants to use a backup medium that won't get corrupted when in use, so a hard drive isn't a good idea for that. (Like a virus/power surge wiping/killing your backup HD at the same time it wipes/kills your other HDs...) So for convenience, use a HD (that you pull all plugs when not in use for backup). For more safety use two HDs. (Alternating backups between the drives). And then also back up to DVD from time to time. And if it's really important then store the DVDs at another location ;-)

Personally if I lose my data I take it as a sign to clean up and organize things and get rid of content that isn't being used.  Kind of like spring cleaning your house, hehe

i'm gonna have to vote for dvd backup, if you backup to external hard drive, that hard drive fails, what did you accomplsih by backing things up? The dvd is there forever, when you need it ,as you add more things to your runtime, do a new backup..dvd's are so inexpensive now. All my dvd's are in a small box, labeled, by content and date

ever since i worked as onsite tech support at law firms for 8 years, ive always considered hard drives as temporary storage. anyone that thinks storing backups on hard drives is safe is deluding themselves. even RAID isnt a completely safe bet - in several cases i have seen both drives in mirrored RAID-1 arrays fail at the same time, resulting in a complete loss of data. and while it is safer, most home users dont use RAID.

DVDs are the safest bets. you can pick up a DVD burner for $40-50, and DVDs are dirt cheap. you could back up your entire poser runtime each month onto a DVD or two for a quarter, and if somehow you damaged the DVD at most you would have to redownload a month's worth of purchases. stored properly, DVDs and CDs will theoretically last between 80-150 years. a harddrive is a ticking time bomb.

an external harddrive can be convenient if you are using poser on several computers, travel a lot, are using it on a laptop, or move other data as well. there is no need to buy retail 'external harddrives' (not to mention that LaCie is pretty expensive). you can simply pick up an external enclosure like this one and put in any internal harddrive you like. there are hundreds of types of external enclosures ranging from $10-100, i simply picked that one because it has both SATA and IDE support. if you have a MAC then i would recommend getting one with both firewire and USB 2.0.
(also, if you have an old external hdd that 'died', its highly likely you can just reuse the enclosure, although many manufacturers make them so they cant be opened/reused).
for IDE harddrives, ive had good experiences in the last few years with maxtor - they make cheap, reliable, high capacity 7200rpm drives with good read speeds, 16 meg cache. i will not buy western digital anymore, and fujitsu has always made the worst POS drives on earth. lacie uses maxtor drives, if memory serves.

last month, one of rio's girlfriends knocked my external harddrive off my desk onto a tile floor. with harddrives you not only have to worry about mechanical failure, and inevitable wear, but also accidental damage since they are incredibly fragile and shock sensitive. backing up onto DVDs is a safer, cheaper and more permanent backup.

I back all my zip files up onto DVD, okay so i';d have to reinstall the whole lot in a mammoth session - not looking forward to that and then I have everything on an external HD and on my internal HD - there' s Poser stuff coming out of my ears.  My next step is to burn my individual Runtimes as is ont DVd - just need to buy a shed load of the darn things and STOP buying content!!!!!!

it's unwise to expect a dvd to last more than 10 years. in any case, poser data will likely be obsolete long before that. I've stored poor-quality CDs in non-ideal conditions, and they quit working after 2 years. as a side issue, it's inadvisable to attempt using a dvd as a poser runtime. if somebody wants to try it, don't hestitate to let us know what is necessary to get it to work.

I think my system would just laugh, burp and crash if I tried to run Poser off a DVD.  Then aain some days it does that just surfing the web.  I've decided it is very much a female and suffers from chronic PMS.

True, I wouldn't guarantee a CD for more than 5 years and a DVD for more than 10.   On the other hand, with the turn around of laser tech, you'll more than likely be transferring older DVD archives to larger and larger formats before the disc is irreparably corrupted.  Most likely, my entire DVD archive (24 discs not including Poser Runtimes) will be converted to dual-layer within the next year or two - already have the drive to do it.

Archive media should be high-quality for sure.  And these and unique discs (for applications, for instance) should be stored in a dryish, cool environment protected from sunlight, dust, and other contaminants.  Mine are stored in a pocketed case and have not had any failures (cross fingers)  - some of these are already 7+ years since burning or purchase.

Robert

Thanks all

Great advice, I have backed up all my runtimes on CD, for now, I have peace of mind concerning all the effort I put into setting up my runtimes and the structure.

A really big thankyou to Acadia for helping me set up my external runtimes.

Rowlando

I just bought a Seagate external 400 gig drive on sale for $250.00 US. I have a lot of stuff. The key to keeping external drives alive longer is to turn of the electricity to them off when you are not using them. The heat is hard on the drive when they are left on all the time.