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By jjoyner - 5 Years Ago
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I purchased iClone 7 and several other related products inApril 2019. In September, I purchased anew laptop that is more capable of rendering 3D graphics/animations; it has twodrives (512 Gb SSD as boot C drive and 1 Tb HDD as D drive). In September, I also retired. Now I am readyto install iClone 7 and the other software. Regardless of whether I start via Reallusion Hub or via a manualinstall, the default installation is to the C drive. I want to be able to render as quickly aspossible. Does this mean that I should installto the HDD keep the SSD as free of files as possible so that I can use it asthe render destination? What is the bestpractice for installing to a dual drive system if one does not want to installto the C drive? Is it best simply tochange C:/ to D:/ for the needed install destinations? I’ve had iClone since version 2.5 but I’m a hobbyist – not apro – who now has more time. Thanks inadvance.
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By justaviking - 5 Years Ago
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Greetings, and welcome to the forum.
I'd actually recommend the exact opposite.
a) Keep iClone and it's "temp files" on the SSD for fastest response time
b) Direct your output - whether .avi or .mp4 or sequence of .png files - to the HDD where you have lots of room
c) If space permits, you can store your iClone project files on the SSD so they open faster, but that's not usually a huge deal, and you can move them to the other disk anytime you want
WHY?
Writing the output files is a low-intensity activity and unlikely to be the bottleneck. You'll be happier being able to launch iClone quickly.
OTHER THOUGHTS:
When installing iClone, you can decide where to put all your "content" (sets, avatars, props, etc.). I put mine on the C: drive (SSD), but they will eventually consume space. I've been on a 500MB SSD for quite a while, so you should be happy that way for quite some time. But note that it's not easy to change your mind later. It's possible, you (groan) you have to edit the registry to point to the new content folder if you move it. Reallusion really, really needs to make that a simple preference setting.
I'm sure others will chime in with additional thoughts.
Good luck, and have fun. 
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By 3dtester - 5 Years Ago
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Hi,
in this case, i would recommend the same as justaviking said.
- iClone Program Files don't consume much space, but the 'temp' storage should be fast
- RL content folders are frequently in use, so it is good to place them on a fast drive as well
- Output destination should have lots of space, but doesn't need to be fast.
So, with your 2 drives you don't have many other options.
However, you can always replace them with faster / larger ones
PS: the 'temp' files location will always be on your C: drive.
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By jjoyner - 5 Years Ago
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Justaviking,
Thanks much for your feedback. So many issues … so little time.
System: laptop with Windows 10 Pro, Intel i7-9750H @2.6 – 4.5 GHz (6-core), 16 GB DDR4 @2666MHz, RTX-2060 (6 Gb)
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By jjoyner - 5 Years Ago
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3dtester, Thanks much for your feedback advising the same thing as Justaviking. System: laptop with Windows 10 Pro, Intel i7-9750H @2.6 – 4.5 GHz (6-core), 16 GB DDR4 @2666MHz, RTX-2060 (6 Gb)
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By animagic - 5 Years Ago
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I'm going to be contrarian and suggest to store ALL content on the 1 TB drive. Even though 500 GB seems like a lot, over time the combination of content and project files will add up. My iClone content files come to almost 700 GB at the moment!
The laptop I use for iClone has a similar configuration as yours with 1 TB secondary drive. Because of space constraints, I decided to add a USB-3 4 TB drive for iClone and rendered output. That has worked well so far without major speed hurdles.
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By 3dtester - 5 Years Ago
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I agree with animagic, too. Content could grow very fast, and then you would end up with space issues on your OS drive!
How about replacing the 1 TB drive with a 2 or 3 TB hybrid?
They are relatively inexpensive and give a nice performance boost over regular laptop drives.
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By jjoyner - 5 Years Ago
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Animagic.
Thanks for your feedback. 500 GB used to seem like a lot, but in today’s world of TB sized downloads and content folders, it’s not that big any longer. I have several external HDDs that each has a capacity of 1 TB or larger that I could use.
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By jjoyner - 5 Years Ago
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3dtester,
Thanks again. Inasmuch as I’ve just purchased the new laptop and have not proceeded much beyond just getting it setup for use, I’ll keep the idea of a hybrid drive in mind as something that I may consider in the future. I do have many external HHDs that I can use for storage and four each has a capacity of 1 TB or more (1 TB, 1.5 TB, 2 TB, 5 TB).
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By justaviking - 5 Years Ago
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It's already getting a bit late for this thread, possibly, but I did want to add a few additional comments regarding my recommendation:
a) I admit I do not buy a lot of "content," so my 500GB SSD was very slow to fill up
b) Doing some Iray animations have the potential to eat up huge amounts of TEMP space, depending on the options you use, but at least it gets cleared out when the render finishes - or can be easily cleaned out manually
c) I also have multiple versions of a lot of my software installed... iClone 5, 6, and 7 (so multiple copies of some of the "content")... about 5 versions of my NLE... those are the worst offenders. As long as software versions don't conflict, I tend to leave the old version around "just in case," and then I sort of get used to them being there and never get around to removing them.
So even with those bad habits, I lived comfortably in my 500GB SSD as a Windows/Applications disk. It is only recently that I finally deleted several versions of my NLE... and just last week I upgraded to a brand new 1TB SSD.
TIP: You can tell Windows that you want your "My Documents" folder to be on your larger HHD, which is what I did.
The final point is, it's very possible that a person could live comfortably for a couple years on a 500GB system drive is a second drive as a storage disk, and by the time the SSD starts to get uncomfortably full, replacement drives will be cheaper than they are now. Of course, if the user is a shopaholic and buys every content pack under the sun, then his C: drive will fill up faster than mine did.
Anyway, both answers are good. Have fun iCloning.
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By animagic - 5 Years Ago
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It's not just the content, but the projects themselves that start to take up space. So if you use iClone regularly, you may run out of space that way. It's just that there is little reason to put content on the system disk.
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By justaviking - 5 Years Ago
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animagic (10/23/2019)
It's not just the content, but the projects themselves that start to take up space. So if you use iClone regularly, you may run out of space that way. It's just that there is little reason to put content on the system disk.
True.
I changed a Windows preference so my "My Documents" folder is on my D: drive (a 3TB HDD), so my project files go there (or more likely, into a project-specific folder on my HDD).
I just like pressing "Next" when I install software. 
No argument, though. Just presenting the OP with two options. If we don't thoroughly confuse someone, are we doing our jobs?
Regardless of which path is taken, the "Content" location needs to be a preference setting that we can change in iClone - even after we've done the installation - without us having to edit the Registry.
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By animagic - 5 Years Ago
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Well, you confuse me alright...
What does the location of My Documents have to do with that of the project files, which, for me at least, are under ...\Reallusion\Custom\iClone 7 Custom\Project?
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By justaviking - 5 Years Ago
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Job,
I guess I normally do a SaveAs to point to a specific project folder. If you simply click "Save," doesn't it go into your "My Documents" folder? I was thinking it only goes into a Content folder if you click the "+" in your iClone content navigator, which I do for Props but rarely for Projects. Maybe I'm wrong about that.
But it's not only iClone. All your other stuff... MSWord files, etc., a lot of stuff just defaults into "My Documents" and "My Pictures" and stuff like that. My first SSD was only 256GB, which I knew would fill up fiarly quickly., so I pointed the "My" folders to my HDD. Then I moved to a 500GB SSD as soon as it became reasonably affordable, which served me well for quite a while, even with my lack of houskeeping. And it was just last week that up cloned it all to a 1TB SSD (Samsung 860 EVO for $130), so I should be set for quite a while again.
Oh, one other tidbit... I "moved" from a 1TB HDD to my first 256GB SSD by moving a lot of stuff off of it ("My Documents" etc) and then "cloning" it to the SSD, so I didn't need to reinstall any softwaare. Since I installed iClone using default values already, everything stayed the way it was. And when the next version of iClone came out, I just accepted all the default values again. If I really did a fresh installation on a virgin system, I'd have to give that some more thought, but my suspect I'd still take the default locations for everything anyway. It's worked okay for me, as I'm sure you're very happy with your setup too.
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By animagic - 5 Years Ago
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How do you open your projects? If they are not under Project, they would not show up in your Content Manager.
I guess I have always used the "+" when saving a project for the first time. If I do a save, it seems to default to the Project subfolder I used last.
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By justaviking - 5 Years Ago
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It's interesting how even brilliant people like you and I can approach things from different perspectives.
To open files, I usually click "File --> Open Project" (I think that defaults to the most recent folder) or more often I navigate to my project folder using Windows Explorer and double-click the project file there to open it up in iClone. I'm likely to have the project folder open in Explorer anyway, since I'll also be working with various images, textures, audio files, and all sorts of stuff.
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By jjoyner - 5 Years Ago
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Justaviking & animagic,
Thanks much for the additional feedback and discussion. I haven’t installed any software to my new laptop yet; I hope to start later this week. I’ll take all of your comments into consideration.
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By DavidinLA - 5 Years Ago
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justaviking (10/23/2019)
Job,
And it was just last week that up cloned it all to a 1TB SSD (Samsung 860 EVO for $130), so I should be set for quite a while again..
When you cloned to a new HD on the same computer did any of your licenses for Reallusion or any other software fail? Or were your licenses tied to the machine opposed to the hard drive? I'd like to do something similar but the thought of dealing with all the licenses on all my various software is worrisome and stops me from going forward with any HD upgrade.
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