Mischief and other things

[quietrob]

Indeed! Just Chill, Ms. Light. Rest up. Did you like music of the 70's or is Mr. Postman, more your style?

 

[Hornet3d]

Well what a week I am having, after fixing Poser of it's fatal error last week, Sunday I found that a lot of my desktop shortcuts did not work. I have a look at the links and they point to Drive D Programs (X86) where they should except the (x86) folder has gone, where to have have no idea. Not in the recycle bin and searches find no match so it does not appear to have been moved in error. Luckily these are my secondary programs and they are backed up. Reinstalled all but three that I can't lay my hands on the backup but not important. Then yesterday Poser gets corrupted again, it launches but with a EZskin window behind the preview area, not only is that distracting but whenever you try to click on a Poser button the EZskin windows comes to the front. The top of the window is off screen so there appears to be no way to close it. This is not specific to Poser 11 as I have had it happen on PP2014 a couple of times but nothing like this with any other program. Having had it in the past I get around it by replacing the copy of folder 11 in the user roaming folder but it does mean I have to relink all my runtimes. Anyway that is now all up and running and I push my chair back ready to head for a coffee only to find myself sat on the floor as one of the casters has broke on the office chair I use. All this and it is only Tuesday.

 

[quietrob]

It's not the programs in question.

This has happened to me twice and I recognize what's happening. Your hard drive is failing. More and more sectors are becoming corrupted. Your drive will fail. You need to gain a new hard drive and move everything from your drive to the new drive. You may be able to rescue some clusters but I am telling your hard drive is failing.

The first time I dealt with a corrupted drive it only lost one file. It was called runtime and it couldn't be retrieved. At least you were wise enough to use have a working backup. The second time it happened I lost more files than I cared to count. Freebie downloads disappear, you may be too stubborn (I am) to pay Content Paradise for storing your content. Anything that you didnt backup from RDNA may be gone. Act now.

From one who knows.

 

[Hornet3d]

It's not the programs in question.

This has happened to me twice and I recognize what's happening. Your hard drive is failing. More and more sectors are becoming corrupted. Your drive will fail. You need to gain a new hard drive and move everything from your drive to the new drive. You may be able to rescue some clusters but I am telling your hard drive is failing.

The first time I dealt with a corrupted drive it only lost one file. It was called runtime and it couldn't be retrieved. At least you were wise enough to use have a working backup. The second time it happened I lost more files than I cared to count. Freebie downloads disappear, you may be too stubborn (I am) to pay Content Paradise for storing your content. Anything that you didnt backup from RDNA may be gone. Act now.

From one who knows.

Thanks for the warning I have just ordered a new drive and that should be here tomorrow. My runtime drive was beginning to fill up so I have been wanting to do that but watching the pennies has delayed that so far but no point in saving for a new computer some months down the road when I need the one I have to keep running for a while yet. So I have decided to bite the bullet and also purchase a larger SSD and external caddy. The plan is to move my runtimes on to this so I can now move to my second system to use Poser if I get major problems with this one.

As far as the failing drive goes it is thankfully, the least critical of the drives as it is set as my D drive and only has secondary programs (those nice to use but not very often programs) and my my work in progress folder. My C drive is an SSD where Poser, Paintshop Pro and my Budgeting Program are all installed and are used either daily as with Poser or the expenses which are a couple of times a week. My runtimes are on my drive E so not affected even if it was all of my content is backed up to Amazon Drive and although this has a cost it also store all my music and photographs that go back years. Many of the photographs go back to my film days so if I lost them they are either gone forever or I have a lot of scanning to do. Like you I do not like paying Content Paradise, or anyone else for that matter, for content I have purchased from them and at least paying Amazon covers all of my data. All my runtime stuff from RDNA was downloaded before they closed so that is not an issue and that is also backed up. As a final precaution any major purchases such as Poser and Paint Shop Pro are also stored locally in archival quality M disks.

Thanks again for the warning give me time to plan a prepare for the changes and gave me an excuse to spend money, not that I need much excuse.

 

[Hornet3d]

OK so progress. After hunting for an hour or more, in vain, for new castors for my chair which I believed had a 8mm pin and all the replacement wheels had a 11mm pin I then went back to the drawing board. Only after struggling for another hour did I discovered my chair is weird (but then so is the occupant) in that the pin going into the wheel is 8mm but the top part going into the base struts of the chair is 11mm. Mind you it took me a lot of struggling to find they way to release the pins so I could measure. All time well spent as my chair has a new lease of life with a set of nice shiny new wheels.

I have Poser back and working and loading all my preferences and with some new hardware on order I am planning for some more work tomorrow. This week is certainly not working out anything like I planned it.

 

[quietrob]

Good Work. Smart moves. You can see the failures mount as they affect your favorite program. I have some custom characters for my comic. Because they require use of the morph brush to fit clothes properly, I save the fitting of these clothes as a PZ3 and a Cr2. When the drive was failing, both files would end up corrupted. Finally the drive failed and during it's last legs I was able to copy the texture, geometry and material files over. I had the face files on a different hard drive just in case and I was able to one by one restore all of my characters.

Isn't it something how our computer chairs are our friends?

 

[Hornet3d]

Good Work. Smart moves. You can see the failures mount as they affect your favorite program. I have some custom characters for my comic. Because they require use of the morph brush to fit clothes properly, I save the fitting of these clothes as a PZ3 and a Cr2. When the drive was failing, both files would end up corrupted. Finally the drive failed and during it's last legs I was able to copy the texture, geometry and material files over. I had the face files on a different hard drive just in case and I was able to one by one restore all of my characters.

Isn't it something how our computer chairs are our friends?

I have had some of the changes in mind for a while but it makes sense to proceed if I have to buy a new drive anyway. My character was another reason for cloud backup as I am not sure I could recreate from scratch and if not I am almost as square one with the book.

I guess the chairs are like our friends as we spend so much time with them and they share both our highs and our lows.

 

[quietrob]

What size SSD did you get? I was thinking of replacing my main drive as an SSD as I think that Poser uses that for it's swap file during rendering. It's got to speed up things. CPU/Graphics Card, Memory. Those three things in that order I think can help speed up renders. I think @seachnasaigh and his sick (sick meaning utterly incredible) rig is so fast he barely has render time and I think he's solid state in all things. I could be wrong. Since you're using your SSd for storage, I would still think you'd see a speed increase. All of my runtimes are kept on external drives. My main (C drive only has programs files.

 

[Hornet3d]

I have three SSDs, two working and one in reserve or four if you count the M drive on the motherboard. The reserve one is a strange capacity, I think it was 186G and it was the the original C drive and it is no longer used other than I holds a copy of Day one information for the system, so last resort I should be able to get my programs back after a mega fail. The drive on the motherboard is 60Gig and was originally used to accelerate my runtime drive that was a conventional drive but now it is my Poser work in progress drive. A year or so ago I upgraded the C drive and my runtime (E) drive to a couple of 250G SSDs I can't say I noticed a major speed change with Poser but the backups are certainly faster. Both drives are still OK but I am down to 30Gig free on the E drive so with me continuing to buy content it is getting close to being full.

The new Drive is a 500Gig SSD which is a new version from Crucial which uses 3D nand, it has some good write ups, has a 5 year warranty, and is very keenly priced at the moment. That is going in an external caddy so it can move my runtimes between machines but it also frees up the existing 250Gig SSD which I am tempted to make my D drive for secondary programmes leaving the new 2Tb conventional spinner for pure data storage.

 

[Faery_Light]

I just recently purchased a 3TB SATA, in terms of storage capacity, how many SSD drives would it take to equal that?
The SSD did come to mind but I could not understand the difference in storage so chose SATA instead.

 

[Hornet3d]

I just recently purchased a 3TB SATA, in terms of storage capacity, how many SSD drives would it take to equal that?
The SSD did come to mind but I could not understand the difference in storage so chose SATA instead.

An SSD is a solid state drive so no moving parts, they have got cheaper than they were a few years ago but you would have paid a lot more for a 3TB SSD that you would for a conventional drive. Both drives are in fact SATA which is just the connection method used to connect the drive to your motherboard or caddy. All modern motherboards use some version of SATA. The real older boards and drives use IDE which had a rows of thin pins to connect rather then the flat connectors used with SATA.

 

[Faery_Light]

Yes, and those pins on the IDE drives bent way too easy, then the drive was useless.
So I guess I did better for storage space than for the price than with SSD.
One thing most people don't understand too, is that even tons of memory will not speed up a drive if there is not enough free space on it.
I need to get my 3TB formatted, forgot to get a pre-formatted one, then start cleaning anything but main programs from my laptop.
It will be an external drive.
This laptop is getting clogged.

 

[Hornet3d]

Yes, and those pins on the IDE drives bent way too easy, then the drive was useless.
So I guess I did better for storage space than for the price than with SSD.
One thing most people don't understand too, is that even tons of memory will not speed up a drive if there is not enough free space on it.
I need to get my 3TB formatted, forgot to get a pre-formatted one, then start cleaning anything but main programs from my laptop.
It will be an external drive.
This laptop is getting clogged.

3Tb SSD drives seem quite rare they tend to double, 500GB, 1Tb,2Tb and then 4Tb which makes sense as they are memory based like RAM memory which follows the same pattern. Up to 1Tb the SSDs are around double the price of a conventional drive but then the price of the SSD takes off. Desktop wise a 4Tb conventional drive is around £100 here in the UK whereas a 4Tb SSD is over £1000. As a result the normal pattern is to use an SSD for running programs and operating systems where speed is the priority, where large amounts of data needs to be stored conventional drives are still the best option. A very long winded way of saying you are indeed correct in your buying options.

 

[seachnasaigh]

@Faery_Light SSDs are essentially a big flash drive. They are especially well suited for laptops, which are more susceptible to getting bumped about, because the SSD is impervious to bumps/jolts.
Hard drive speed has only negligible influence on render speed. I use them in those servers which have laptop hard drive bays; the 256GB size is plenty for a render slave which only has Firefly/Superfly, Lux, and HyperVue render engines installed. I have some larger SSDs in workstations, but they're a luxury, not a necessity.

Render speed depends on the number of processor cores and the clockspeed of those processor cores.
When evaluating used server blades/workstations for purchase, I multiply the number of cores times the clockspeed to get a measure of rendering power (call it "coreXclock").

For example, a HyperThreaded quad-core Core i7 @3.2GHz would give you a coreXclock = 4x2x3.2 = 25.6
note: 4 cores X 2 threads per core (HyperThreading) X 3.2 GHz clockspeed

A used server/workstation with a pair of X5650 Xeons (H/T hex-core @2.66GHz) would yield a coreXcloxk = 2x6x2x2.66 = 63.84, well more than double the Core i7's rendering muscle.
note: 2 CPU X 6 cores each X 2 threads per core (HyperThreading) X 2.66 GHz clockspeed

Memory is generally not the bottleneck, so I'd not place much importance on memory clockspeed. What *is* critical is that you have enough memory that the render engine never has to use the hard drive to make up a shortfall in memory. "Disk swapping" is about a thousand times slower than RAM, and it will quickly wear out your hard drive.
As long as you have enough RAM that you never approach 100% memory use, adding more RAM won't speed rendering. I have a lot of RAM in my machines because my personal rendering habits tend toward big scenes with complex materials and high quality settings. Someone who does character portraiture could get away with having only a fraction of my RAM.

@Hornet3d does fairly extravagant scenes and would probably benefit from more RAM than most other people would need.

 

[Hornet3d]

@Faery_Light SSDs are essentially a big flash drive. They are especially well suited for laptops, which are more susceptible to getting bumped about, because the SSD is impervious to bumps/jolts.
Hard drive speed has only negligible influence on render speed. I use them in those servers which have laptop hard drive bays; the 256GB size is plenty for a render slave which only has Firefly/Superfly, Lux, and HyperVue render engines installed. I have some larger SSDs in workstations, but they're a luxury, not a necessity.

Render speed depends on the number of processor cores and the clockspeed of those processor cores.
When evaluating used server blades/workstations for purchase, I multiply the number of cores times the clockspeed to get a measure of rendering power (call it "coreXclock").

For example, a HyperThreaded quad-core Core i7 @3.2GHz would give you a coreXclock = 4x2x3.2 = 25.6
note: 4 cores X 2 threads per core (HyperThreading) X 3.2 GHz clockspeed

A used server/workstation with a pair of X5650 Xeons (H/T hex-core @2.66GHz) would yield a coreXcloxk = 2x6x2x2.66 = 63.84, well more than double the Core i7's rendering muscle.
note: 2 CPU X 6 cores each X 2 threads per core (HyperThreading) X 2.66 GHz clockspeed

Memory is generally not the bottleneck, so I'd not place much importance on memory clockspeed. What *is* critical is that you have enough memory that the render engine never has to use the hard drive to make up a shortfall in memory. "Disk swapping" is about a thousand times slower than RAM, and it will quickly wear out your hard drive.
As long as you have enough RAM that you never approach 100% memory use, adding more RAM won't speed rendering. I have a lot of RAM in my machines because my personal rendering habits tend toward big scenes with complex materials and high quality settings. Someone who does character portraiture could get away with having only a fraction of my RAM.

@Hornet3d does fairly extravagant scenes and would probably benefit from more RAM than most other people would need.

I built my machine about five years ago now and I equipped it with 32Gig of RAM for the precise reason that Seachnasaigh has given here, namely to avoid Disk Swapping. At the time It was more than I ever used but slowly over the years my scenes have become more complex and I push the 32Gig hard. In the last few months I have run out of memory so when this machine is replaced I do have to start looking at 64Gig despite the costs involved.

 

[Hornet3d]

Failing drive is now swapped out and the larger SSD for my Poser content is now live. Luckily other then the loss of the Program (X86) folder which disappeared a few days ago I do not appear to have lost any data. A few little hiccups along the way but I muddled my way through as I usually do. Poser is now working off the new drive which is now external using a USB 3 caddy. I wondered if that would impact the speed of loading a scene or adding content but if anything it is marginally quicker though I cannot understand why as it was on an internal SSD before.

 

[seachnasaigh]

The USB connection would be slower than SATA connection. USB3 is much faster than USB2.

You can get a PCIe card with an external SATA connection. Judgement call as to whether it's worth the time/cost.

Once you go beyond 32GB RAM capacity, you're in server/workstation motherboard territory. When that day comes, I heartily recommend a dual-CPU board.
You can outrun one of my $50 old used Xeon processors with a shiny new expensive Core i7 ; but you'll find it very hard to outrun two old $50 Xeons.

 

[Hornet3d]

The USB connection would be slower than SATA connection. USB3 is much faster than USB2.

You can get a PCIe card with an external SATA connection. Judgement call as to whether it's worth the time/cost.

Once you go beyond 32GB RAM capacity, you're in server/workstation motherboard territory. When that day comes, I heartily recommend a dual-CPU board.
You can outrun one of my $50 old used Xeon processors with a shiny new expensive Core i7 ; but you'll find it very hard to outrun two old $50 Xeons. View attachment 36453

That is the bit I do not understand I expected there to be a speed impact but by having it external I can move it between machines if required and only have to back up one set of runtimes. I was trying it out to see if the speed impact would a price worth paying, except I cannot see any impact and Poser seems more responsive. There is clearly something else going on but I don't know what, not that I am complaining.

I understood about the twin Xeons and that it my tentative plan, just need to wait until the money comes in than see what options I have.

 

[Faery_Light]

My laptop has the Intel core 15 7th gen processors with 8 gb RAM and a 1TB drive.
I've already used half that disk space but clean it out when some work is finished and need to do new.
That is where my external drives get used for the storage so I always have the finished work on them.
My desktop that I recently got back, loaned it to my brother till he replaced it, has 16 gb RAM and I think it was a dual core processor .
3D art takes a lot of storage and it does use a lot of memory when rendering.
I don't generally do large, complex scenes, my work is more in texturing products.

 

[Hornet3d]

My laptop has the Intel core 15 7th gen processors with 8 gb RAM and a 1TB drive.
I've already used half that disk space but clean it out when some work is finished and need to do new.
That is where my external drives get used for the storage so I always have the finished work on them.
My desktop that I recently got back, loaned it to my brother till he replaced it, has 16 gb RAM and I think it was a dual core processor .
3D art takes a lot of storage and it does use a lot of memory when rendering.
I don't generally do large, complex scenes, my work is more in texturing products.

Yes 3D can take a lot of storage particularly when you need to have backups also. On the plus side my new 2Tb drive was around the £50 mark so not a major outlay. I am not very efficient with storage so I always have lots, at present my total storage capability is 8Tb across multiple drives not including the SSDs which I see as working drives rather than storage. That gives me my local backup capability and then, in addition, I lease 100Tb from Amazon for cloud storage but that stores not only 3D but also my digitised photographs (I started photography in my teens) and music.