Daz DAZ and Disk Speed

[TheBat89]

Over the last few years of using Daz my asset folder has become, well, let's say bloated. At first this just made scenes take longer to load, which was no big deal - I'd open something and then just minimize the program for a minute or two while everything finished loading. Now, though, even posing has become laggy (mostly for Gen8 female), which has made scene creation frustrating.

What I'm wondering is: would putting my Daz folders onto a speedier disk drive help remedy the situation or does DAZ itself have some sort of bottleneck wherein it chokes after a certain number of assets no matter what?

Right now DAZ is installed on a fairly basic HDD and I was thinking of buying a Samsung 860 EVO and transferring my Daz folders onto that. Obviously there's a performance jump between those two drives but I'm just not sure if DAZ specifically would benefit from it, especially in the way that I want it to. Has anyone done something similar by transferring their Daz install onto an SSD and have a noticeable increase in performance and responsiveness?

I know trimming down my asset folder would help but all of my characters use bits and pieces of tons of different morphs, so I'd rather explore other options before really taking an axe to my files and getting rid of a ton of them.

 

[Porcus Dev]

I don't think you'll notice much improvement using an SSD, at least I didn't notice it when I put an ultra-fast one, even in the scene's load times, lol
The only thing that improved is the speed of moving through the folders when searching for content, which went from waiting 2-3 seconds to being instantaneous in some cases... so it's not a big improvement either, although it's appreciated.

The problem you describe may have to do with some morphs or assets you have installed or are using... I remember having a similar problem in a particular scene, where moving the character took a long time, it was desperate; I finally discovered that it was because of the clothes she was wearing, and what I did to go faster was to take those clothes off, create the pose, and then put them back on; doing this the speed was normal.

So, I would recommend you to do the test with the G8 base figure to know if it goes slow; if it goes slow it could be some morphs, although it would be strange. If the G8 base figure is going fast and you have a problem with a particular character you're using, check the clothes or other assets it might have, take them off one by one and see if the speed improves.

 

[TheBat89]

I don't think you'll notice much improvement using an SSD, at least I didn't notice it when I put an ultra-fast one, even in the scene's load times, lol
The only thing that improved is the speed of moving through the folders when searching for content, which went from waiting 2-3 seconds to being instantaneous in some cases... so it's not a big improvement either, although it's appreciated.

The problem you describe may have to do with some morphs or assets you have installed or are using... I remember having a similar problem in a particular scene, where moving the character took a long time, it was desperate; I finally discovered that it was because of the clothes she was wearing, and what I did to go faster was to take those clothes off, create the pose, and then put them back on; doing this the speed was normal.

So, I would recommend you to do the test with the G8 base figure to know if it goes slow; if it goes slow it could be some morphs, although it would be strange. If the G8 base figure is going fast and you have a problem with a particular character you're using, check the clothes or other assets it might have, take them off one by one and see if the speed improves.

I tried the suggestion with the clothes and it definitely helped, though posing still isn't as smooth as I'd like it.

I've tested the morphs by loading the base G8F model with all my current morphs and tried posing it her and found it to be laggy and unresponsive. I then removed all the morphs but the base ones from the data folder, loaded the base G8F model again, and tried posing her, which was then smooth and responsive.

I've also taken them all out and then re-introduced them via batches at a time. While doing that I've found that the more that's in the data folder the slower it becomes. I don't think it's any single morph but rather the quantity of them. I've dealt with bad morphs before and they usually either give an error message or deform the character, so I don't think a bad morph is the case here.

I'll probably just have to bite the bullet and really sort through all my morphs, getting rid of the ones I don't like or don't use.

Thanks for your help.

 

[Synx]

A SSD won't really improve speed while posing a character, as you aren't really writing anything to the drive when you are posing a character. A SSD will speed up opening the file and allow you to faster move between folders but thats it really.

Before removing all the morphs one by one have you tried hiding all the assets you are not working on at the moment? It sounds more that your scenes are just getting to big that you run out of RAM. Hiding stuff should help in that case.

 

[TheBat89]

A SSD won't really improve speed while posing a character, as you aren't really writing anything to the drive when you are posing a character. A SSD will speed up opening the file and allow you to faster move between folders but thats it really.

Before removing all the morphs one by one have you tried hiding all the assets you are not working on at the moment? It sounds more that your scenes are just getting to big that you run out of RAM. Hiding stuff should help in that case.

I figured it might be reading some of the morphs, hence my idea for a SSD. I don't think it's a RAM problem as I have 32GB of it plus 11GB of VRAM (and when I have Task Manager open, I can see that even my largest scenes usually only use about 40% of it). It's also not the scenes becoming too big -- it happens even with a blank scene and only the base, untouched Gen8F model loaded. As I said, after removing all but the base morphs everything becomes fast and responsive; then the more I reintroduce the slower and unresponsive it becomes.

 

[Porcus Dev]

A SSD will speed up opening the file and allow you to faster move between folders

Move faster through folders yes... open the scene faster, unfortunately, no
I did several tests when I mounted the SSD, and there's no difference.

Examples:
Tested speed with "AS SSD Benchmark": HDD 120 MB/s read - 126 MB/s write // SSD 2.757 MB/s - 2.812 MB/s write
Scene1: HDD > 1:27 // SSD M.2 PCIe x4 > 1:29
Scene2: HDD > 5:21 // SSD M.2 PCIe x4 > 5:09

So, on a ssd 23 times faster, the scenes open at the same speed, lol

 

[Synx]

Ow wierd, thought it would lower the scenes faster as well. Are the scenes themselves installed on the SSD as well?

As for OP then it sounds more like a morph or asset causing it yeah. It sometimes can cause some wierd issues. You could try updating your graphic drivers as well see if that matters but doubt it.

 

[Porcus Dev]

Ow wierd, thought it would lower the scenes faster as well. Are the scenes themselves installed on the SSD as well?

Yep, everything was in the SSD, including the temporary and configuration folders that DAZ uses, and the tests were done several times and rebooting the computer each time to be on equal terms

Update: From what it looks like, DAZ has no problems with the disk speed when loading the scenes... but since they are loaded into RAM, the opening speed will depend more on the speed of the RAM, I think.

 

[lancelotdulak]

Im havin insane load times. One of the BIG problems is daz not getting rid of morphs and textures etc even after you delete something from a scene. Ive paid more attention and made sure i click no when it asks if i want to save unused but id love an addon that removed everything that wasnt in use.

Another thing i think may be a big problem is the database system uses along with windows laughably bad DOS. Im planning on going through my (huge) library and removing all those "that may be cool someday i think ill install it" things ill never ever use.

 

[rayminator]

Im havin insane load times. One of the BIG problems is daz not getting rid of morphs and textures etc even after you delete something from a scene. Ive paid more attention and made sure i click no when it asks if i want to save unused but id love an addon that removed everything that wasnt in use.

Another thing i think may be a big problem is the database system uses along with windows laughably bad DOS. Im planning on going through my (huge) library and removing all those "that may be cool someday i think ill install it" things ill never ever use.

okay what type hard drive you are using WD or Seagate

WD has a major lawsuit against them for the SMR disks SMR make thing a lot slower or unusable

has it's stated here

You must be registered to see the links

 

[lancelotdulak]

okay what type hard drive you are using WD or Seagate

WD has a major lawsuit against them for the SMR disks SMR make thing a lot slower or unusable

has it's stated here

You must be registered to see the links

Ty for the info. Not sure as i have a clusterf*ck of ssd's and hard drives. Im planning on upgrading to a 2tb ssd asap but theyre still damned expensive and im pretty sure id need another 2tb not long after