I bought an external hard drive to clear up room on my desktop. I have a new laptop that I would like to have this program there as well. My question is, will my downloads stay between the devices? When I transfered my collection to the external drive I had to re download them all. I'm not sure I want to do that again for the laptop, and if there is the possibility that I would have to do that every time I switch devices I obviously don't want to do that.

Thanks in advance

You can copy your collection from one drive to another. However, if you don't put your data folder where iStripper expects to find it, you will have to make a change to the registry.

I have iStripper installed on two Macs, a Mac Pro and a MacBook Pro. All my data is on a WD My Passport mini external drive. I normally play iStripper on the Mac Pro. When I'm on the road, I disconnect the My Passport from the Mac Pro (with iStripper shut down). At my destination, I can plug the drive into my MacBook and play iStripper. I had to figure out what changes were needing in the preference file (Mac equivalent to Win Reg.), but that wasn't too hard.

@wrongrider99

I use a portable harddrive to store my collection for my laptop due to limited HDD space on the solid state drive it has. I keep the model and data files on the portable and only have the "bin" file on the internal drive. You have to ***** the windows registry to get the GUI to find the data files if you want to do that.

As long as the GUI is set to look for that drive, it will use it. I have found that I normally have to have the portable HDD plugged in to my laptop before I start it or sometimes iStripper won't find it. Occasionally I have to "rebuild collection" if the GUI doesn't want to access the portable but as long as the files aren't corrupted for some reason then it works fairly well.

I also have another portable HDD that I use for back up of all my cards and both of my GUI's can use that one as well because it has a different drive letter assigned to it. You can have multiple card storage places assigned to the GUI but at least one of them has to be connected when you start the GUI.

You can also transfer cards from one HDD to the other but don't do while the GUI is active or things can get messy.

I use both an External HDD, and move it from computer to Computer.
I also Have a Network Share.

So when I switch where I'm going to get the Models from.
I simply make a change in my Registry
I change the Models Path so it Points to either the Network Share,
or the Folder on the External HDD.

This is all done Before you Start iStripper.

If you Models are already downloaded.
you can make as many Copies as you need as a backup.

It's fastest if you can Install Both HDD in the PC and make the copy.
but USB also works, just takes longer.

I did a Copy of 2.5 tb via USB 2.0, and it took over 8 Days.
Worked Perfect, but took Forever...

I just got a New Synology NAS
So I'm going to Copy all My Models once again...
That will be at the Network Speed...

I have to get One new Switch, as I have One that is still just 10/100
and that limits my Network connection to 100 Mbps

@pumpdude48, @WA
I am soon going to copy over by USB 3.0 all my cards 1.79 TB currently ../Models folder is an external drive,
onto another 2 TB external drive. This will become my first ever backup.. .
You said:

You can also transfer cards from one HDD to the other but don't do while the GUI is active or things can get messy.

Does this mean I will not be able to use iStripper ( or even buy & download cards) for 7 days, without disrupting this process, or what ? ;-)

It's a tricky thing I have found.

If the GUI is using the HDD you are transferring from while you are transferring, you can rack up some read/write errors if your system isn't fast enough to deal with it.

I have twice now had to completely reformat my portable HDD because my system got "*****" or somesuch and screwed up the "bootlog" file on the HDD. If that happens you can use a file recovery tool (Recuva) and keep your files instead of redownloading them but that operation takes over half a day to complete at my card count.

I also don't know why it takes so long for others to transfer files as I have both of my outside drives plugged in to neighboring USB 3.0 jacks and I can get my 4k collection from one drive to the other in about 8 hours.

Now, my smaller HDD has only up to 720p cards since that is all my laptop has for screen resolution so I can move those faster than the 3k ones I have for my desktop. And yes, I keep two complete sets of cards, one at 720p and one at 3k.

I also have all my data files backed up since I use Staryk/rebailne custom cards for all of them and also have redone many of the .png files for each card as well, so alot of effort to redo if I screw it up. Which happens more often than I care to admit. Someone here about a year or so back accused me of being "PEBKAC" and I had to look that up... Once I found that I had been insulted without even knowing it, I had to admit that sometimes I am my own worst enemy where this stuff is concerned, hence all the ***** experience, backups and extra storage space used.

Hope this helps sir!

@pumpdude, I'll buy a PEBKAC mug after this just to remind me..LOL ;-)>
Ok, that does it...I will copy /Models content over in card sections a,b,c,d etc. just to be sure
and to give my rig ( &me) a rest. I'm not leaving it on for days :-/

Started my Transfer from one of my External HDD to my Synology NAS.
It has a USB 3.0 port on it, so I'm trying that Route Instead of Across the Network.
I'm about 1 hour in to the 2.59TB copy.
It's telling me there are 8 hours and 48 min. to go..
So Maybe it will take 10 hours.

While It's Copying, I won't use the GUI.

Edit:
It's been 15 hours and it is not yet completed.
98% Done...
So Another Hour maybe..
16 hours total, to use the Built in USB 3.0 to Transfer 2.59 TB of Models folders.

Edit2:
It finished up right around the 16 hour mark.
Based on the time required.
2.59TB of Data in 16 hours
is 47.15 MegaBytes per second or 377.2 Megabits per second
(this is the Fastest USB3.0 transfer I've ever Personally Experienced )
( I have seen some short Burst reach 120 to 140 MB/s, but for Large file transfers, nothing this high. )

https://www.gbmb.org/mb-to-mbit

Microsoft have never been good at estimating the remaining time

Microsoft have never been good at estimating the remaining time

Not a Microsoft product,
The Synology NAS is Linux Based.

Edit:
Link to product
https://www.synology.com/en-us/products/DS418

I'm now in the process of transferring all of my PhotoSets.
368GB of Extracted Photos and Zip files. 278786 files total.
These are stored on an Internal HDD, and I don't want to pull it out to hook it up via USB3.0 enclosure.

So I'm transferring these over the Network.
This has been running about 8 hours now.
It was working on the ZIP files first.
i was seeing an Average transfer speed of 62 Megabits per second.
Now that it's gotten to the Extracted Photos, the throughput has dropped to about 44 Megabits per second.
i estimate the Overall throughput will be in the 48megabits / second range.

368 GB = 2,944,000 Megabits
at 48 Megabits / second = about 17 hours

I'll let you know how long it actually took.

Edit:
It took 17 1/2 hours.
from 1:41 pm till 7:11 am the following day
add two activity photos

I myself have:

2 * 8 bay Synology NAS
7 * Netgear Ready NAS NV+ & NV+ 2

Busy replacing the Ready NAS with the Synology ones. Primarly because the later versions of the ReadyNAS NV+ 2 seem to have an issue that Netgear have never responded to, where they just go "offline"and cannot be connected via the browser.

They may remain accessible via the file system, but that's a bit too iffy for me when it may be my primary backup of data.

Plus the Synology NAS has two ethernet ports to allow dual transfer flows

It was a toss up for me.
1st was that I wanted to use 3.5" HDD
I was looking at both the DS418 or the DS918+
They are both 4 bay hot swappable units

The 918 can be expanded with a 5 Drive bay expansion unit, where the 418 can not.

Since I will only use it for personal use.
I decided that the ability to Expand it, and the other extra features of the 918,
weren't a requirement for me.

I went with the DS418
I did consider the DS418J unit, But it does NOT have Hot Swappable drive bays.
So I ruled that out for me.

The DS418J Might be a good solution for anyone looking to Add more storage.

These are Diskless - Meaning you have to Purchase the HDD separately.

So the Storage capacity is determined by the Size and Quantity of HDD you put in them, and the type of
RAID you use.

the 418j is around $300 - $350
the 418 is around $400 - $450
the 918 is around $550 - $600

• HDD cost is in addition to the cost of the NAS.

Compare features of all 3
https://www.synology.com/en-us/products/compare/DS418/DS918+/DS418j

I've only presented 4 bay NAS units.
Because you need at least 3 Drives to build a RAID 5 redundant storage system.
You can't do that with less than 3 drives.

Raid size calculator
https://www.synology.com/en-us/support/RAID_calculator

i put in (4) 4TB HDD for a total of 16TB in Raid 5
this net me 10.9TB of redundant storage.
( 4TB is the Decimal Size, but the HDD is actually 3.65 TB of Binary storage )
(Raid 5 - One HDD is used as the Parity Drive, so you Get the Storage capacity of all the drives minus 1 )
4 drive minus 1 = 3
3 x 3.65TB = 10.9 TB

In raid 5, any 1 of the HDD can Fail, and you are still protected.
Replace the Failed Drive, and it will be rebuilt on the Fly.

What is SHR and RAID
Use SHR if you have Mixed Sizes of HDD
Use SHR or RAID if you Have all the Same size HDD

https://www.synology.com/en-us/knowledgebase/DSM/tutorial/Storage/What_is_Synology_Hybrid_RAID_SHR


Pictures:

• 1) (4) 4TB Drives in Raid 5 give 10.9 TB net storage
• 2) All 4 drives are the same - details of the drive
• 3) I created 2 volumes, a 100GB and a 10TB volume. I'm currently using 49%

WA,

I've got a similar setup. I've had a Drobo 5D for a bit more than 3 year. It's a direct attached drive connected to my Mac with a thunderbolt cable. It operate much as you described an SHR. The drives are hot swapable and can be of different sizes. One drive (or two if you wish) acts as a parity drive. The unit can hold up to 5 drives. I recently had a drive fail and ran into some difficulty. It seems that two other drives were close to failure and that messed up the rebuild process. I had to call (and pay for) tech support to discover this. The solution was to clone both of the failing drives. I did this and everything is now OK. No lost data. With the back-and-forth with tech support and waiting time for the new drives this all took about 2 weeks.

Recently I bought a Drobo 5N. That's the same technology but packaged as a NAS unit. I've it connected on a eithernet 1000 network. I had to replace my old router to get the speed. It's used as a time machine drive for three Macs and also used for backup storage. Time machine works fine, but it takes 3-5 minutes to initially open a folder when it is first mounted. That's probably due to the huge amount of files and folders it contains. Still, that in an irritant. As you reported, moving a large amount of data is time consuming. Moreover, the Mac doesn't seem to work well with this NAS device. Data transfers have failed for reasons I haven't been able to pin down causing a lot of lost time. Apples says NAS drives are logically independent (which they are) and any fault is on the Drobo. Drobo says their device works fine. Both say I should move my data in smaller increments, but that would take a lot of effort on my part. I may write a script to do this and see if that solves the problem.

I took a look..
Yes, very Similar. With Similar Drive Spanning Technology.
I decided to stick with industry standard Raid. ( the drives can then also be transferred to any other Raid Controller )

Windows 10 also has an issue with Not Maintaining the Mapped Network Share.
Support said it because it times out from inactivity.
I've had it drop the connection in the Middle of large file transfers. So how can it be timing out?
But a Different computer can still connect to the share and access it.

So that to me, Suggests, it's not the Device, but the PC / OS.


( the PC still shows the share as a Mapped Drive,
but it can't transfer any data to , or from the share. It's like it's blocked or not connected. )
In fact the Server no longer shows up in the Network map.
but yet a different PC, finds it and connects to it.

The only fix, is to reboot the PC that lost the connection.


I also have USB 3.0 connections that just stop working,
I get a "the semaphore timeout period has expired" Message with them..

Both issues, I haven't find a solution too..

worth noting
Never happens on Windows 7.

While I'm sure that he'd never admit it, I have to believe that Wyld works for either NASA, NSA, or both.

Compared to his computer skills, I feel like a caveman, finger painting pictures on a cave wall.

He sure has helped me out, when I couldn't access my iStripper collection.

Speaking of which, I'm about to run out of space on my 2TB external hard drive. I have an unused 1TB external hard drive, and I was wondering - when I max-out on my 2TB - can I download future Cards on my 1TB, and still access the Cards on my 2TB?

If that didn't make any sense, please see my second sentence from the top.

@HemiCuda, yes you can as long as the GUI is told to look for it/them in settings.

I think you can have up to 5 different locations and the GUI will use any and all that are connected to add new cards and read/play existing ones.

I have two separate drives connected most of the time with some cards on one and the rest on another.

If one of the drives "disconnects" during operation, the GUI may not find it again until restart and then you may need to 'rebuild collection' to get the GUI to see and use those cards. You won't actually lose the cards but the GUI won't use them until you do that.

I also use Synology NAS DS718Plus. I found it is rather Mac friendly.
Models and Data folder are clone to one of my external portable hard disk (connect to Mac) , and Synology NAS DS718Plus.
I use iStripper in iMac and MacBook Pro.
Both have the same all data file in data folder.
In Macbook Pro, only a few of may favorite cards put in models folder.
In Macbook Pro, the data storage folders are set to 3 folders: models in MacBook, models in external hard disk, and models in Synology NAS.

In intranet within my house, iStripper play smoothly either use NAS or external hard disk (connected to Mac).
But when I go out, MacBook can not found intranet of my house, NAS can not be used. iStripper still can play the favorite cards, within MacBook.
NAS for storage of iStripper models/data folder is good method only in intranet connection.

I call Synology for help to out-net usage of data but can not get answer.

@Jplus

I think this might Help
WebDAV sould provide a Mapped Network Drive to the Synology Share.

so then iStripper would access the Files Via the Mapped Drive letter.


https://www.synology.com/en-us/knowledgebase/DSM/tutorial/File_Sharing/How_to_access_files_on_Synology_NAS_with_WebDAV#t2_1

Thanks Wyldanimal

I had followed the method previously and do it again, but still can not put models folder to finder when I go out.

@pumpdude48, much, much appreciated!

Glad to know that it can be done. I'll look into it.

Thanks, again!