Jeez - never knew the thing got that big! :) Anyrate, for those blessed w/ a CD-burner, how exactly do you back yours up? Do you pack it and burn the whole thing, pick and choose directories and zip those, or do you simply rely on backed-up copies of downloads + the original Poser CD's as your backup? In the interests of future laziness, I decided to zip my 2GB Poser4 directory, and park it onto a single CD-ROM as backup. It barely fit onto a single CD-R @ 640MB. Poser4bu_3-18-02.zip is burning onto CD even as I type this... any suggestions or hints to make this unwieldy pack of data easier to manage for backups? /P

Well what I do, is every new model I get, every one, right away I burn the file on a disk called Poser, that way I have all the files in there original state with their creators names, I never really back up Poser, I have my original and then I have all my files. Once I did back up according to Folders, like Geometries, Poses, Characters, just like it is set up in your Explorer window. Sharen

I back up my folders, but not the program. I don't zip them just copy them just like they are in the program, that way I'll save a step when I go to reinstall, like I'm getting ready to do now since I have a new harddrive. Last count from my backup was over 22 CD's worth of stuff. Needless to say, I will be going through everything after the new harddrive is installed and decide what I use and what I've just kept around every since I started Poser :) Pendy

Every product I buy, or limited edition free downloads in the last while goes to a storage directory. CD-ROMS based on product lines are burned from this directory when a sizable amout of product is created. I figure I can always reinstall poser from the media - but these cd-roms are my nsurance policy.

I have a second HD installed and i backup the whole partition every two weeks, and of course ,the patition with the os ,too. I use norton ghost and the whole thing lasts about half an hour.( And restoring everything about the same time). So if something serios happens, i have everything running about half an hour later ,again. The HD is in a special case so it can be removed from the computer and placed somewhere else without opening the computer once a month i burn all the things i dl on a cd.

My Poser folder is 4.34 Gigabytes. I save all my installers for all my props and characters, and I pray ;-). I don't know how it got so big, with all the free daz3d give aways since '96, and all the Millennium characters, Poserworld subscription, freestuff, etc... ;-) I guess I could devote an entire 4.7 gig DVD RAM disk to back it up, and it might take several hours.

One, eh... two words: external Harddisk. ;)

With the poser HDD at 18.7 GB backing up is something I Would noy attempt. I merely make sure all downloads both bought and free are burned to cd. I have 25 full cd. not counting cd i bought.

DVD+RW - thats the best way to do it for ume, and I also have an image of the crucial stuff on our file server.

thgeisel Tell me how you do this. I want to add a second drive to my computer for backup. But nothing supports USB or Firewire for that purpose. At least to my knowledge. Thanks. Kevin

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

@MeInOhio: I doubt that norton ghost works with USB or Firewire. I think thgeisel has a removeable IDE harddisk. Those are quite common here in germany. I have a Firewire and simply synchronize the folders between the harddisks with InSync. (see link)

I archive original downloads onto cd's (now DVD's), and run a backup of my Poser drive & graphic drives onto an external 120 Gig Firewire drive every 2 weeks. I use InSync also.

Huh?? Backup?? Real men don't do backups! I don't suppose I'm a real man since I do backups to a SCSI tape unit, 8GB per tape. The Poser files along with most of Runtime. PZ3 files I burn regularly to CD's. I keep every one as a ref and for the magnets, poses etc. All my DLs, mostly in their zip form, get backed up to tape as well. All of that takes hours, so I don't do it more than once a month at the very most. :] FishNose

I just burn the RUNTIME folder to a cd (or cd's) then, after a clean install (if need be) i simply darg the runtime folder into the new poser DIR...it rewrites/ adds whatever is in the new RUNTIME folder.

Once the obj's in the geometries directory have been burned on a CD, those burned obj's are write protected and PCF files won't work in objaction mover ... at least that's my experience.

Gordon

Just right click and uncheck read only file and it's no longer write protected...at least I've never had a problem with that part and I back my entire runtime folder up once a month, (So many cd's so little time LOL) But I always keep a copy of the original files as well as the runtime folder for easy reinstall if I have to.

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Remember...getting lost is the senic route to the eventual destination. (And a lot prettier than the straight road)

I'm in the middle of backing up my entire Poser folder, including everything. The reason is easy: some stuff gets installed in the Poser root folder rather than the runtime folder (3D Worlds for instance.) I guestimate my total backup size to be 10GB. I'm using NTI Backup NOW, with Windows XP Home Edition. Something tells me I shouldn't have started the job this time of night.... 2X CD Burners are slow.. I hope I don't run out of CD's.

RAID - If you purchase a second hard disk, of equal(Most optimal) or greater size, then with a $25-$50 PCI(Some motherboards have this) RAID controller you will allways have a Mirror of your hard disk! If one conks out on you the other will let you know, and then pick right up where the junk left off. Nowadays with 40GBs, at pricewatch.com, hovering around $50 this is a nice solution to all your backup worries! With the right level of RAID you can Copy and Strip(Speed) your hardisk across up to 4 drives! Servers do this. I think the level I suggested(For mirroring) is RAID Level 1. = )

Hehe, I just backed it up 2 days ago. I zipped the Textures folder and then all the others into another, along with UV Templates. It took 2 discs.

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Working on the ethos that "digital data doesnt exist unless it exists twice" I copy all zips and exes as they are downloaded into one blank "DATA" directory and copy the extracted data into a blank "Runtime" directory, I sort this as I go for better file management. These are copied via a data card to a seperate computer (at work) as and when convenient, then burned to CD when it reaches 600Mb. No need to burn Multi-Gigabyte back ups, and re-installing is a doddle, just copy each Runtime CD sequentially. Only use the Zipped data to re-install items deleted in any clear-ups. Anything for an easy life B)

I finally finished my first total Poser backup with NTI BackupNOW. It was a long process, considering the slow CD burner. In the end 6 CDR's were needed, and I feel much more secure. Hey, mirrored hard drives are nice in theory. But hard drives are nowhere near as permanent as CD's. And you can easily take CD's anywhere.

Hey thanks for that tip on InSync. That's a cool little program and it works quite well. I like to buy these kinds of useful utilities from "the little guy"...shareware is great. As for the actual question, like others I burn the original downloads off to CD. First I organize them into categories to group them to make the "hunting for it" part go faster when I have to do that. I also have Poser installed on a second drive, so I have been mirroring the Runtime (over 8gb) on my primary drive just in case something goes horribly wrong. Reinstalling everything from the CD's would take an eternity so this seems like the best way to go about it. That InSync program is going to make it a lot easier to do it.

Attached Link: http://www.cd2html.de/cd2html.en.html

You might want to consider this handy program called CD2HTML. It's FREE!!! It looks over your folders, and creates a web page complete with thumbnails and icons to click on to unzip files. You can save the web page to your CDs. Then you can load your cd's, and see what you have! I've used it, and it's decent. I'm still trying to figure if I can get greater control over the web pages themselves.