As you all know a few months ago I was having some major computer issues. So I hurried and backed up all of my runtimes to CDs....lots and lots of CDs.

Some of my runtimes are many gigs large so in order for me to get them onto CDs I had to break them up into pieces and zip up parts of it, especially the Pose and Texture folders.

I started off doing one zip at a time with Winzip and it was sooooo tedious and I was afraid my computer was going to breakdown before I finished. So I decided to use "Batchzip Toolkit" to do it. I had never used it to zip up whole folders before, only single files and it worked really well the times I had used it.

I got my new computer and unzipped my runtimes and haven't really done a whole lot in Poser since then.

Today I go into Poser and Poser tells me that it's looking for file after file after file after file!

I nosed around in that runtime and found that none of the folder structures in the pose folder or the texture folder were kept!  Some structures are gone completely and all the files are in one folder.  Others have the structure maintained, but there is  a top layer of files not inside the folders which seems to be all of the files that are also in the sub folders.  And there are folders missing completely     It's such a mess .

Batchzip zips, but it doesn't maintain the file structure!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So now I have to redo most of my runtimes.....all of the freaking large ones that I had to zip up to save!  

So beware.  Shortcuts create more work !

Oh NO!!!! eeeeek. That's awful! Hope you can get it sort of sorted somehow. Love esther

Oh Acadia! I think you've been through enough problems regarding your computer as it is, now this! One thing's for sure, you sure love your Poser to put up with all the headache.LOL!

Tip for ya, Acadia, because I sooooooooooo feel your pain ... get an external hard drive and do periodic backups of your runtime folders to it.  That way, if this should happen in the future, you'll have intact copies of your runtimes saved.  You don't even need to keep the external hard drive hooked up.  Just plug it in when you want to do a backup or a restore.

Since I've moved all of my external runtimes to one of my SATA drives, my external hard drive is strictly for backups now and this is what I do.  I use Acronis' True Image 10 to run a weekly backup of my OS partition and my external runtimes.

actually Batchzip Toolkit will let you keep path names, you have to tell it to compress keeping path names and decomress keeping path names.  Sounds like ya didn't read how to use the software before doing all your runtimes OR you just have to decompress using the keep paths wich ya didn't do the 1st time.

From DTR Leasure's web site:
"I have lots of archives in a single folder, can I batch extract them so each of them extracts to a unique folder ?
Yes, take a look at the "decompress to a folder based on filename" option in the decompression settings. "

I don't use the software anymore, have other programs but it's a fully capable program, it's not the programs fault.

Quote - Tip for ya, Acadia, because I sooooooooooo feel your pain ... get an external hard drive and do periodic backups of your runtime folders to it.  That way, if this should happen in the future, you'll have intact copies of your runtimes saved.  You don't even need to keep the external hard drive hooked up.  Just plug it in when you want to do a backup or a restore.

Since I've moved all of my external runtimes to one of my SATA drives, my external hard drive is strictly for backups now and this is what I do.  I use Acronis' True Image 10 to run a weekly backup of my OS partition and my external runtimes.

I have one now and my new computer also has a DVD burner.

My old desktop was 6 or 7 years old and had a really slow CD burner...one of the first ones HP made actually. And the external HD that I had was only 19 gigs and was full.   So I was doing what I could with what I had available to me.

Oh well.  I guess it's time to weed out the stuff I never used. I guess that is one positive thing.

But I do have my runtimes on my partitioned drive on my computer, as well as my new external drive.  Once I get it all sorted out...again... I plan on burning them to DVD too....unzipped!

I back up on an external drive and DVD too. Redundant backs ups is the Key.

I unzipped using Winzip. I'll try unzipping with Batchzip and see if that makes a difference.

As for "keep path"... to me a path is  "C:Program FilesCurious Labs etc. etc. etc.  I don't know if I did that or not.  I used default settings.  However teminology such as "keep folder structure" would be more meaningful to understand.

I know it's no help now but an external backup drive is best way to go in my opinion. I have a 200 gig external drive formated as an NTFS volume with compresion turned on. I use Easybackitup to do the actual backups 2 to 4 times a month. I use Easybackitup becuase it just basically copies any changed files to the backup drive instead of compressing them or puting them in some proprietary format. That way I just copy back the files I need if there is a problem. I can even use the backup as an additional runtime for my laptop. I only backup my data and downloads, operating systems and software I can always reinstall.

I have 1 internal drive, partitioned into 3 parts for OS, programs, and a basic library for downloads and runtimes commonly used and renders

1 external drive 500gb has backups of runtimes/pics/etc (just data, no software) as well as extra runtimes for "rarely used" items

dvd burner to put backups of everything, a written dvd is used maybe once a year, rare

There are two types of path (generally speaking) - absolute and relative.

Absolute paths go back to the root volume: "C:Program FilesCurious Labsetc. etc. etc."

Relative paths work off of the current directory (folder): "Runtimeslibrariespropsetc. etc. etc." - that should look familiar if you've ever gazed at a Poser file in a text editor.

WinZip always stores paths relative to the folder being zipped unless you use the 'Store Full Path', then it does a full path (not absolute, mind you) - this includes the entire folder hierarchy from the volume, but not including the volume.

When you extract, you should be sure to have "Use folder names" checked in order that the folder hierarchy is reconstructed - otherwise all of the files are just placed into the destination folder no matter the folder relationship in the zip archive.

WinZip 11 here.

So, if you see paths in WinZip - then your Poser Runtime folder hierarchy is there.  You just didn't extract it so as to recreate it.  Might still be a way out in this case.

As a fellow recoverer from fatal lose of data you have my utter sympathy...but it is a good way of weeding out the runtime as well...and I know that's no consolation right now...just keep your chin up and remember Poser is not the only reason Babbage invented his difference machine... ;-)

I have a very simple and effective approach, my runtime is always below 2GB that is the size of driver E:.
I don't use all what I have, I keep only in disk what I use. Time to time I add something new and what is obsolete or don't use it anymore goes to a CD, I have more than a hundred of CDs (zipped).
Is very easy to administrate 2GB and a full backup of my actual Poser fits in only two zipped CDs (in one all the textures and in the other all the runtime).
If very good to have a small partition, when you have no space to put something new it means that you have a lot of obsolete things to saved for making room for the new.

I've done a preliminary check on all of my runtimes and from a surface view all but 2 seem to be ok.  I guess I'll find out in time if Poser can't locate files.

Anyway, it seems (I hope), that the problem only affected my "Props" and "V3 Charactrer Addons" Runtimes.  I redid the props one last week because of similar problems, but didn't twig as to the reason "why" I was having problems.  I'm nearly finished reinstalling my character addons now, so hopefully that will be the end of it.  I've reinstalled my runtimes so many times over the last few years that I've gotten quite fast at rebuilding them,  LOL 

Hopefully this will be the last time I have to do this now that I have a large HD (partioned with 2 volumes 60 gigs and 239 gigs), a large External HD (not partitioned)  and a DVD burner. Unfortunately I didn't have those available to me with my old computer, so I had no choice but to use CDs to save my data. It was either that or lose it all.  At least this way I retained it...sort of, but I can see what I had installed and it's making reinstalling it faster.

I've been using that SyncToy program from MicroSoft.  It helps, but I find that while it moves files around, it doesn't seem to delete the empty folders that are left. Any tips on that? I read the instructions carefully and it seems I have it set up right (to mirror what happens in each pair), but it doesn't seem to do that where empty folders are concerned.

For the mac folks... You can do it a lot faster w/o any third-party apps. Just open Terminal ( Applications -} Utilities -} Terminal ), then type the following: tar -cvzf /Volumes/(path to where you want it saved)/runtime-backup.tar.gz /Volumes/Macintosh HD/Applications/Poser 6/Runtime ...then hit "enter". (hint: hitting the "tab" key while halfway through typing a directory name will auto-complete the name. hitting it twice in rapid succession will give you a list of options based on what you've typed already). Stuffit actually understands opening tar.gz files, so no probs extracting it. Also, there aren't any size restrictions on how big a tarball you can build, so no probs in that direction, either. For Windows? download cygwin to get the same functionality, but the learning curve for using that is a bit steep... /P

Talking of terminal have you ever done something and have the computer chat to you and say things like, be careful you could wipe your hard drive, be respectful of other people's things, and above all remember that with great power comes great responsibility? I can't remember the exact wording now, but it was pretty funny and scary too. I was doing something in terminal and the puter suddenly started conversing with me. Love esther

Usually when I built a new computer if it used the same type of hard drive put it in the new computer and transfer the files to the new hard drive. just install it as a slave. I know its a lot of trouble but it worked for me.

This is terrible! I'm sorry.

I have my own question... is there a way to automate DAZ installs. The best thing for me would be to be able to have each install dumped out into its own folder that I could zip. I have to do a reinstall and many of my DAZ installers were corrupted by a virus some time back...  seems it would be much safer to store these as zips. I hate those damn installers.

you have my sympathy Acadia i recently had the same problem except mine was self imposed. I upgraded my computers Op System but had the brilliant idea of zeroing my HD first. I have a 72 GB external HD i backup to, but it broke recently (that piece of sh;#) but i also backup to CD and within the last year DVD's ( ya about 200 of them now) and i have a disk catalog program for hunting down stuff on CD problem is the cataloger wont work in my new System upgrade, which i knew in advance, so i got a new disk catalog program but it would not work except in the new software, so i could not use it until i upgraded >.< so everything got upgraded and here i am about 4 months later and i still have not got all my Poser content reloaded LOL

Quote - I have a very simple and effective approach, my runtime is always below 2GB that is the size of driver E:.
I don't use all what I have, I keep only in disk what I use. Time to time I add something new and what is obsolete or don't use it anymore goes to a CD, I have more than a hundred of CDs (zipped).
Is very easy to administrate 2GB and a full backup of my actual Poser fits in only two zipped CDs (in one all the textures and in the other all the runtime).
If very good to have a small partition, when you have no space to put something new it means that you have a lot of obsolete things to saved for making room for the new.

That's very good in theory, and probably works great for disciplined folks. I even tried to do that once myself, but kept saying "oh, I'll use that tomorrow".

I had a sheer terror moment once myself, backed stuff up on a DVD-RW instead of a plain DVD, and wiped it by mistake! luckily, I redownloaded most of it...

I've had the most horrid luck when it comes to saving my files with CDs.  Between bad zips, bad burns, corrupt disks, inability to "inflate data" from zip files on a burned CD.... I don't even want to think about the amount of content that I've lost or the number of times I've had to redo all of my runtimes.

As this recent phenomena seems isolated to my props and my V3 character addons runtimes (I hope), I am counting myself lucky.

I plan on purchasing another external hard drive, so that way I'll have my files saved in 4 places...2 external drives, DVD's and my large volume on my partitioned C drive.  I'm done with CDs and trying to use them to store files because I'm done with using zip files to assist me with that.  I'll be storing all of my runtimes in an unzipped state to minimize the losses.

It's so frustrating to spend so much time saving stuff only to find out in the end you wasted your time and lost it anyway :(

There is a very important procedure after saving in a CD or DVD, check the CD!!!!
A burned CD is not always correct even when the CD burner reported that it was burned OK, the failure rate is small but exist.
There are some free utilities that allow you to compare the content of a CD to hard-disk, I use CdCheck.
If your content are zip files you have the alternative to test the zip file on the CD.
If the check failed even in few files you have to burn another CD and discard this one.Another symptom of a possible future problem is when the check process become too slow reading the CD content, the CD can be OK but by some reason accesing its data is more difficult and you have the risk that this problem will increase with time turning the CD unusable, so burn another CD!!
Another measure is to classify what you backup in order of importance.
There are some item that when you lose them nothing important was lost, so burn it on a CD.
There are items that are important and you cannot lose them, burn two backup copies and store them in different place.
There are item that if you lose them you die, burn three backup copies and store one copy in your mother's house or somewhere else.

Quote - That's very good in theory, and probably works great for disciplined folks. I even tried to do that once myself, but kept saying "oh, I'll use that tomorrow".

Don't think that I have good discipline, my live anthem is:
Why I must do it today if I can do it tomorrow?,....and tomorrow never comes.....

Thta is why a small partition size is important, one day I have to make room for new stuff and if I don't make more room I cannot add something, so the size remain always small and the entropy never increase.

Quote - Talking of terminal have you ever done something and have the computer chat to you and say things like, be careful you could wipe your hard drive, be respectful of other people's things, and above all remember that with great power comes great responsibility? I can't remember the exact wording now, but it was pretty funny and scary too. I was doing something in terminal and the puter suddenly started conversing with me. Love esther

I have, and do... a lot :) "Respect the privacy of others" and "Think before you type" are usually what shows up on the screen when you're trying to elevate your privileges w/o any pre-set permission to do so (e.g. typing "su", which stands for "SuperUser" ). *nix people tend to have a pretty good sense of humor about stuff like that, and OSX is rooted solidly in BSD UNIX. :) /P

Penguinisto - I thought it was hilarious, especially when I got to the spiderman quote, but my finger was nearly shaking when I hit return. Love esther

Quote - As you all know a few months ago I was having some major computer issues. So I hurried and backed up all of my runtimes to CDs....lots and lots of CDs.

Some of my runtimes are many gigs large so in order for me to get them onto CDs I had to break them up into pieces and zip up parts of it, especially the Pose and Texture folders.

I started off doing one zip at a time with Winzip and it was sooooo tedious and I was afraid my computer was going to breakdown before I finished. So I decided to use "Batchzip Toolkit" to do it. I had never used it to zip up whole folders before, only single files and it worked really well the times I had used it.

I got my new computer and unzipped my runtimes and haven't really done a whole lot in Poser since then.

Today I go into Poser and Poser tells me that it's looking for file after file after file after file!

I nosed around in that runtime and found that none of the folder structures in the pose folder or the texture folder were kept!  Some structures are gone completely and all the files are in one folder.  Others have the structure maintained, but there is  a top layer of files not inside the folders which seems to be all of the files that are also in the sub folders.  And there are folders missing completely     It's such a mess .

Batchzip zips, but it doesn't maintain the file structure!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So now I have to redo most of my runtimes.....all of the freaking large ones that I had to zip up to save!  

So beware.  Shortcuts create more work !

I'm sorry you had to learn the hard way, on such a huge project.

I don't use backup software, I just burn stuff to disc, so my method might be behind the times, but here it is:

1. Compress files with winrar.
2. Test compressed files with winrar.
3. Create image file (ISO) with burnatonce.
4. Mount image file with daemon tools and test compressed files with winrar again.
5. Burn DVD.
   5a) (optional: use DVD testing app (couple of free programs available) to test burn quality)
6. Load DVD into drive and test with winrar yet again.
7. Extract all data to hard drive and test it (how to test depends on data - for poser this means a new install of poser, and the extracted files/runtimes placed where needed).

Obviously this is only for huge or very important backups, like what you were doing.  It takes a lot of extra time but it's worth it, because errors can creep in at any stage.

Btw, you should buy a DVD burner.  Blank DVD discs cost roughly the same as blank CD discs, but hold about six times as much data.  Easier to keep store and keep track of one DVD than six CDs.  DVD burners, even combo CD/DVD burners, aren't expensive (30-40 bucks, maybe less).

SIGH  Oh well, I've been wanting to clean out my "Hair" runtime anyway.

goes off to build yet another runtime....again!