How to move VaM to a different drive

[btacoses]

I am moving VaM from my OS drive to a data drive. Both are M.2 drives. The OS drive is drive C and the data drive is drive D.

I have already copied over the entire VaM folder. Is there anything else I should do? I don't know how the VaM installation works, but I wonder if I will have to install VaM again, and if so what I need to do before a new install. Thanks for the help!

 

[khaal]

I believe everything is self contained to that folder unless you did some custom setup (example would be hard links to data outside of folder). I have mine on an external drive and even wiped the OS recently. All my work carried over but if concerned the VaM_Updater.exe has an option button to check core integrity. If it fails you can then do sync/repair core (from the option page) for the version you're on as it will download anything missing.

 

[TToby]

It is OK, just copy that folder like khaal said.

It is all in that folder, unil you didn't made some unusual things yourself. I have copied it several times and never re-installed VaM.
For safety reasons, I would maybe keep the old folder and take a look if everything works before deleting it.

 

[_Wolf_]

I ran a little experiment, for shits and giggles, and it worked.

I have a 4TB NAS (network storage). Since VAM starts to run sluggish with a lot of Vars in the local directory, I decided to try and eliminate that, but still be able to access the vars. In the hopes of gaining performance back(in the menus and scene loading) and space.

So what I did was make a Symbolic link to my (backup) Addon's folder that's on my Nas and that worked! So what I did was move my main addon's folder outside of VaM's folder and made a Symbolic link to the mapped drive. Since my backup wasn't up-to-date with what I have locally, I could see what was the latest var on the backup, go into VaM and search for that and it showed. I also know it's working because I'm watching the network performance and I see the activity to and from.

Main thing is I wanted to free up space on the drive VaM is on, but not lose access to all the vars. Since the Var's are not being loaded and accessed locally, it seems to give a little performance back along with space, like menus opening a little faster, female morphs, cloths, hairs etc. Just the initial load of VaM takes a bit, which I believe is do to the network speed & NAS drive speed i'm seeing in task manager on the vam process.

So in "theory" this can also work if you have your addon folder on another drive. I think the Var loading portion (using this method) will depend on your drive speed (or network and nas drive speed if you go the route I did) But I really haven't gotten a chance to do a performance benchmark yet. Just keep in mind that VaM will be accessing/loading the vars from another location. I also think and "assume" if you use this method, have another ssd or hdd you are going to use for the Link, you could turn bitlocker on and it'll prevent any malicious scripts from causing any harm, like deleting files. Course bitlocker is a bit more complex in set up and utilizing the way we want it, so the average user won't be savy with it. Plus there are other things you can do, once the folder is isolated like this from the main VaM folder.

Here is the guide I used. HowToGeek-Symbolic Link

 

[H37IX]

just wanted to throw in my two cents...

I moved my folder over to a raid0 m.2 drive(s) that hold my main scenes and configs but then I suggest also creating a new folder, something like "vam-clean", copy the vam update exe from your main vam folder and run it in the clean folder, it will build out a clean folder for you to test things in if you ever start having issues. I like the symlink idea mentioned above and will try that today to see how it works out for me. I have another folder I call "dirty" that has all my backups and scenes i no longer use but would be nice to just access them all on that drive with a symlink. we have a lot of issues the way we use vam as well and every little bit of performance we can gain back with tips like these are a god-send!

 

[atani]

just wanted to throw in my two cents...

I moved my folder over to a raid0 m.2 drive(s) that hold my main scenes and configs but then I suggest also creating a new folder, something like "vam-clean", copy the vam update exe from your main vam folder and run it in the clean folder, it will build out a clean folder for you to test things in if you ever start having issues. I like the symlink idea mentioned above and will try that today to see how it works out for me. I have another folder I call "dirty" that has all my backups and scenes i no longer use but would be nice to just access them all on that drive with a symlink. we have a lot of issues the way we use vam as well and every little bit of performance we can gain back with tips like these are a god-send!

Please keep in mind the dates on posts, this one is 3.5 years old, even the OP hasn't been to the hub in months. No need to dig up really old questions that were answered already.