Trainz File Advice Needed

[mapsgame]

I am looking to make more room on my 1TB SSD internal drive. On my C: drive I have several versions of Trainz installed, each with several data build xxxxxxx files. I am looking for advice on what data build xxxxx I could uninstall/delete/remove AND the recommended steps. I have already changed the backup preferences from 7 to 3 for trimmed the backup files for TRS 19 & 19 Platinum, TRS12 and TANE The data builds are:

TRS12 – data builds - I can only find one.
TANE SP4 [2] data build xxxxxx files.
TRS19 [2] data build xxxxxx files
TRS 19 Platinum [2] data build files
TRS Plus [1] data build xxxxxx files

Pretty sure I am going to uninstall TRS12.

Q: Can I remove the extra data build xxxxxx files? And How?

 

[JCitron]

I am looking to make more room on my 1TB SSD internal drive. On my C: drive I have several versions of Trainz installed, each with several data build xxxxxxx files. I am looking for advice on what data build xxxxx I could uninstall/delete/remove AND the recommended steps. I have already changed the backup preferences from 7 to 3 for trimmed the backup files for TRS 19 & 19 Platinum, TRS12 and TANE The data builds are:

TRS12 – data builds - I can only find one.
TANE SP4 [2] data build xxxxxx files.
TRS19 [2] data build xxxxxx files
TRS 19 Platinum [2] data build files
TRS Plus [1] data build xxxxxx files

Pretty sure I am going to uninstall TRS12.

Q: Can I remove the extra data build xxxxxx files? And How?

TS12 is all in one. The userdata folder is located wherever you installed TS12. Uninstalling TS12 should also remove your data folder as well. I say should because I can't remember if that gets deleted too. It's been a long time since I've done anything major with TS12 that required me to delete the userdata folder.

For T:ANE and up, the procedure is the same:

To find out which folder is active and which one is outdated by Starting T:ANE, clicking on Trainz settings and then the Install tab. The build-folder listed in there is the active one and the other folder can be deleted.

Uninstalling the program can be tricky due to the service packs and patches. These tend to break the uninstaller so that uninstalling needs to be done manually, meaning delete the program folder found in C:\Program Files, or C:\Program Files(x86) for TS12.

You might get lucky and be able to uninstall T:ANE and the others you choose to remove by uninstalling the patches first prior to uninstalling the program.

Your old data folders have to be manually deleted. Pressing the SHIFT-key when deleting the folder will incinerate it.

There's something you might want to consider before deleting the older versions, except for the duplicate data folders.

There's a folder called Backup that's located within the Trainz data folders that contains up to 7-days of backups, not consecutive days however, that are named in the YY-DD-MM format. A backup is made every time an asset or route is modified or updated in Content Manager. In the newer versions of Trainz, the content is getting larger and so are the backups and these can eat up 10s of GB of content or more. You can limit the number of backups should you want to by going into Trainz settings on the Launcher then clicking on the Dev tab. Backup folders, located under the Backups folder, can be deleted manually.

In T:ANE and up, these data folders can be moved to another drive and the folder renamed. You might want to consider doing this rather than deleting the content. This is the best of both worlds. You keep your programs on your boot drive and your Trainz data on another drive including an AC-powered external drive such as a Seagate Backups drive. I use an Oyen external enclosure for all my data and the access time to this USB-C device is a bit faster than the internal SATA port and I use old hard drives not SSDs. Once the data is moved, the programs can be reassociated with their data folders without skipping a beat.

The other advantage is should you update your computer you can easily take your data drive with you, and should your computer need rebuilding, the data is kept intact without risking losing everything.

It goes without saying though having a good backup is the best and I recommend backing up your data before doing anything drastic such as removing your data folders.

 

[mapsgame]

TS12 is all in one. The userdata folder is located wherever you installed TS12. Uninstalling TS12 should also remove your data folder as well. I say should because I can't remember if that gets deleted too. It's been a long time since I've done anything major with TS12 that required me to delete the userdata folder.

For T:ANE and up, the procedure is the same:

To find out which folder is active and which one is outdated by Starting T:ANE, clicking on Trainz settings and then the Install tab. The build-folder listed in there is the active one and the other folder can be deleted.

Uninstalling the program can be tricky due to the service packs and patches. These tend to break the uninstaller so that uninstalling needs to be done manually, meaning delete the program folder found in C:\Program Files, or C:\Program Files(x86) for TS12.

You might get lucky and be able to uninstall T:ANE and the others you choose to remove by uninstalling the patches first prior to uninstalling the program.

Your old data folders have to be manually deleted. Pressing the SHIFT-key when deleting the folder will incinerate it.

There's something you might want to consider before deleting the older versions, except for the duplicate data folders.

There's a folder called Backup that's located within the Trainz data folders that contains up to 7-days of backups, not consecutive days however, that are named in the YY-DD-MM format. A backup is made every time an asset or route is modified or updated in Content Manager. In the newer versions of Trainz, the content is getting larger and so are the backups and these can eat up 10s of GB of content or more. You can limit the number of backups should you want to by going into Trainz settings on the Launcher then clicking on the Dev tab. Backup folders, located under the Backups folder, can be deleted manually.

In T:ANE and up, these data folders can be moved to another drive and the folder renamed. You might want to consider doing this rather than deleting the content. This is the best of both worlds. You keep your programs on your boot drive and your Trainz data on another drive including an AC-powered external drive such as a Seagate Backups drive. I use an Oyen external enclosure for all my data and the access time to this USB-C device is a bit faster than the internal SATA port and I use old hard drives not SSDs. Once the data is moved, the programs can be reassociated with their data folders without skipping a beat.

The other advantage is should you update your computer you can easily take your data drive with you, and should your computer need rebuilding, the data is kept intact without risking losing everything.

It goes without saying though having a good backup is the best and I recommend backing up your data before doing anything drastic such as removing your data folders.

Thanks JCitron! Exactly the advice I was looking for.

 

[mapsgame]

Thanks to your advice and guidance, I successfully set up a new folder on my external ssd and copied the TANE build xxxxx data folders to the new external drive folder. Everything's working well so I deleted the old build xxxxx data folders from my desktop recapturing 32Gb of storage on my desktop drive.

After making a backup copy of my 4 TRS19 build xxxxx folders (153Gb) I have a follow up question regarding my 4 separate TRS19 build xxxxxx data files. Is there a way to combine them into one? If not does it make sense to make CDPs of my routes or those routes I downloaded from the DLS. Then keep only the single build xxxxx that has the most content and reinstalling the CDP routes make sense? I would probably have to do some downloading from the DLS but I have a 1st class ticket for that. Suggestions and/or advice appreciated.

 

[mapsgame]

TS12 is all in one. The userdata folder is located wherever you installed TS12. Uninstalling TS12 should also remove your data folder as well. I say should because I can't remember if that gets deleted too. It's been a long time since I've done anything major with TS12 that required me to delete the userdata folder.

For T:ANE and up, the procedure is the same:

To find out which folder is active and which one is outdated by Starting T:ANE, clicking on Trainz settings and then the Install tab. The build-folder listed in there is the active one and the other folder can be deleted.

Uninstalling the program can be tricky due to the service packs and patches. These tend to break the uninstaller so that uninstalling needs to be done manually, meaning delete the program folder found in C:\Program Files, or C:\Program Files(x86) for TS12.

You might get lucky and be able to uninstall T:ANE and the others you choose to remove by uninstalling the patches first prior to uninstalling the program.

Your old data folders have to be manually deleted. Pressing the SHIFT-key when deleting the folder will incinerate it.

There's something you might want to consider before deleting the older versions, except for the duplicate data folders.

There's a folder called Backup that's located within the Trainz data folders that contains up to 7-days of backups, not consecutive days however, that are named in the YY-DD-MM format. A backup is made every time an asset or route is modified or updated in Content Manager. In the newer versions of Trainz, the content is getting larger and so are the backups and these can eat up 10s of GB of content or more. You can limit the number of backups should you want to by going into Trainz settings on the Launcher then clicking on the Dev tab. Backup folders, located under the Backups folder, can be deleted manually.

In T:ANE and up, these data folders can be moved to another drive and the folder renamed. You might want to consider doing this rather than deleting the content. This is the best of both worlds. You keep your programs on your boot drive and your Trainz data on another drive including an AC-powered external drive such as a Seagate Backups drive. I use an Oyen external enclosure for all my data and the access time to this USB-C device is a bit faster than the internal SATA port and I use old hard drives not SSDs. Once the data is moved, the programs can be reassociated with their data folders without skipping a beat.

The other advantage is should you update your computer you can easily take your data drive with you, and should your computer need rebuilding, the data is kept intact without risking losing everything.

It goes without saying though having a good backup is the best and I recommend backing up your data before doing anything drastic such as removing your data folders.

Thanks to your advice and guidance, I successfully set up a new folder on my external ssd and copied the TANE build xxxxx data folders to the new external drive folder. Everything's working well so I deleted the old build xxxxx data folders from my desktop recapturing 32Gb of storage on my desktop drive.

After making a backup copy of my 4 TRS19 build xxxxx folders (153Gb) I have a follow up question regarding my 4 separate TRS19 build xxxxxx data files. Is there a way to combine them into one? If not does it make sense to make CDPs of my routes or those routes I downloaded from the DLS. Then keep only the single build xxxxx that has the most content and reinstalling the CDP routes make sense? I would probably have to do some downloading from the DLS but I have a 1st class ticket for that. Suggestions and/or advice appreciated.

 

[JCitron]

Thanks to your advice and guidance, I successfully set up a new folder on my external ssd and copied the TANE build xxxxx data folders to the new external drive folder. Everything's working well so I deleted the old build xxxxx data folders from my desktop recapturing 32Gb of storage on my desktop drive.

After making a backup copy of my 4 TRS19 build xxxxx folders (153Gb) I have a follow up question regarding my 4 separate TRS19 build xxxxxx data files. Is there a way to combine them into one? If not does it make sense to make CDPs of my routes or those routes I downloaded from the DLS. Then keep only the single build xxxxx that has the most content and reinstalling the CDP routes make sense? I would probably have to do some downloading from the DLS but I have a 1st class ticket for that. Suggestions and/or advice appreciated.

That's good news, I'm glad you could free up space.

I recommend backing up the 4-TRS19 data folders before doing anything with them.

You could try copying the local and original folders from each fold into the one you want to keep. During the copy, if you receive any messages about overwriting data, choose skip all.

Once you've copied your content into the build-folder you want to keep, and is the active folder, run a database repair to integrate the newly copied data into your current database.

The alternative and safer way is to connect to and open each data folder one at a time and save any custom content to CDPs. Stuff acquired from the DLS can be downloaded again, but anything you've modified has to be saved to CDPs. If you have anything from 3rd-party sites you have to manually reinstall that content. It's actually easier to do that than it is to copy that over.

Hope this helps.

 

[mapsgame]

That's good news, I'm glad you could free up space.

I recommend backing up the 4-TRS19 data folders before doing anything with them.

You could try copying the local and original folders from each fold into the one you want to keep. During the copy, if you receive any messages about overwriting data, choose skip all.

Once you've copied your content into the build-folder you want to keep, and is the active folder, run a database repair to integrate the newly copied data into your current database.

The alternative and safer way is to connect to and open each data folder one at a time and save any custom content to CDPs. Stuff acquired from the DLS can be downloaded again, but anything you've modified has to be saved to CDPs. If you have anything from 3rd-party sites you have to manually reinstall that content. It's actually easier to do that than it is to copy that over.

Hope this helps.

Success with storage up grades, and moving the Trainz local data files to free up space on my C: drive. See post [1]. This is not the detailed step by step upgrade plan I created but just an overview that will hopefully be helpful to others. When I purchased my computer I only purchased a one 1TB nvme ssd drive for my C: drive to serve as my boot and storage drive. Silly me to think I would never need more storage. A lesson learned!

First, I made a disk image of my C: drive to an external USB drive. Then copied all of my Trainz local data files for each build xxxxxx to the external USB drive. I then the deleted the Trainz automatic backup versions from the Trainz local data files for each build xxxxxx and reduce the number of Trainz automatic backups in the Dev tab to zero. That helped recover Gigs of storage, but it still was not enough.

I researched my mother board and learned it came with two Gen3 nvme m.2 ssd slots and found that the second one was open. I also confirmed my mother board could not take advantage of Gen4 nvme ssd speeds. I knew that Gen4 would work but not give me double the speed of Gen4 vs Gen3 so why pay more and not get the speed advantage. I purchased two new Gen3 2 -2TB nvme m.2. ssds at a very reasonable price. I installed one in the empty slot and after formatting it, I cloned my C: drive to it. I then physically swapped out the my 1TB nvme ssd with the newly cloned 2TB nvme ssd drive to serve as my C: drive. I installed the 2nd new 2TB drive and after formatting it move all my Trainz local data folder content for each build xxxxx to this new T: drive following the guidelines of the Trainz wiki "Help:Moving Content". After confirming all Trainz builds worked properly with content from T: drive, I then deleted the content files and folders from of the local data folders for each build xxxxxx from my C: drive gaining 100s of Gig. I purchased an external case for my original 1TB nvme ssd with a USB C connection and reformatted it for additional storage. Many thanks to JCitron for his advice in achieving this success.

 

[mapsgame]

That's good news, I'm glad you could free up space.

I recommend backing up the 4-TRS19 data folders before doing anything with them.

You could try copying the local and original folders from each fold into the one you want to keep. During the copy, if you receive any messages about overwriting data, choose skip all.

Once you've copied your content into the build-folder you want to keep, and is the active folder, run a database repair to integrate the newly copied data into your current database.

The alternative and safer way is to connect to and open each data folder one at a time and save any custom content to CDPs. Stuff acquired from the DLS can be downloaded again, but anything you've modified has to be saved to CDPs. If you have anything from 3rd-party sites you have to manually reinstall that content. It's actually easier to do that than it is to copy that over.

Hope this helps.

John, I need some advice on reinstalling TRS19 and Trainz Plus.

My Windows OS became corrupted and could not be recovered so it was necessary to do a clean install of Windows 11 OS. Which means I lost the drive C: TRS executable file and the "userdata-redirect-map.txt" file that points to the external drive. Per the above posts, I had previously successfully moved all my TRS Local Data Folders for TRS 19, TRS19 Platinum, and Trainz Plus to an external drive. I do have an Image backup but wanted to go with a clean install to get rid of windows bloatware that has built up over the last 5 years.

So when Trainz (TRS19 Std., TRS19 Platinum, and Trainz Plus Std.) are reinstalled to C:/Users/Name/AppData/Local/NV3 Games/trainzver/build xxxxxxxxx. The local data folders for these new installs will be in drive C: and the "userdata-redirect-map.txt" file will also point to drive C: and have a new build version number for each software install.

Questions and Advice Needed:
1) I am wondering what is the best way to have the new install local data folders in drive C: redirect to the local data folders stored in the external drive instead of drive C:?
a. Can I manually modify the new "userdata-redirect file-map.txt" from the new install to point the the previous local data files in the external drive? or, Is it first necessary to first move the new local data files from drive C: to the external drive so that the Trainz software creates a "userdata-redirect-map.txt" file that points to the external drive?

2) Am I over complicating this? Is it possible to just change the install location in Trainz launcher to point to the previous local data folders in the external drive?

Thanks in advance for your help.

 

[JCitron]

John, I need some advice on reinstalling TRS19 and Trainz Plus.

My Windows OS became corrupted and could not be recovered so it was necessary to do a clean install of Windows 11 OS. Which means I lost the drive C: TRS executable file and the "userdata-redirect-map.txt" file that points to the external drive. Per the above posts, I had previously successfully moved all my TRS Local Data Folders for TRS 19, TRS19 Platinum, and Trainz Plus to an external drive. I do have an Image backup but wanted to go with a clean install to get rid of windows bloatware that has built up over the last 5 years.

So when Trainz (TRS19 Std., TRS19 Platinum, and Trainz Plus Std.) are reinstalled to C:/Users/Name/AppData/Local/NV3 Games/trainzver/build xxxxxxxxx. The local data folders for these new installs will be in drive C: and the "userdata-redirect-map.txt" file will also point to drive C: and have a new build version number for each software install.

Questions and Advice Needed:
1) I am wondering what is the best way to have the new install local data folders in drive C: redirect to the local data folders stored in the external drive instead of drive C:?
a. Can I manually modify the new "userdata-redirect file-map.txt" from the new install to point the the previous local data files in the external drive? or, Is it first necessary to first move the new local data files from drive C: to the external drive so that the Trainz software creates a "userdata-redirect-map.txt" file that points to the external drive?

2) Am I over complicating this? Is it possible to just change the install location in Trainz launcher to point to the previous local data folders in the external drive?

Thanks in advance for your help.

In summary...

+ You can rename your Trainz data folders, meaning the "Build" folder anything you want.
+ You can disregard the old user-data.txt file since that will be recreated again.
+ You can even place them wherever you want including another hard drive if you have one and with multiple TRS versions, you can place the individual data folders under a single one such as TRS-DATA

When you start up each version, you need to select your data folder for that version.
Click on Trainz settings on the Launcher.
Click on the Install tab
Click on the ... on the right.

A Windows Explorer window will open up.

Browse to where you copied your data-folder to for that version, i.e. TRS-DATA\
Click on the TRS_19 folder, if that's what you renamed your TRS19 Build folder to.
Click Select, or Select Folder depending upon the version.

The window will close and an "Update translation tables" process will run and you can restart.

If all goes well, when you restart that version again, your existing database will be found and you won't need to log or set your graphics options in since that information is already there.

Repeat this for each version after testing to ensure everything is intact.

Using a separate hard disk from your boot location is highly recommended. I keep my test versions on my D: drive under a single folder TRS-DATA just as I showed above and my working PLUS data on my F: drive. This will make backing up data as well as editing content if you need to so much easier and reduces the risk of losing content due to a trashed boot drive that needs to be formatted.

I never bother with imaging software and copy the Trainz data-folder(s) to an external back up drive using Tera Copy or Fast Copy. This makes copying data between machines easy and also accessing old data should I need to restore an older version of a route or session I didn't back up separately to a CDP.

 

[mapsgame]

In summary...

+ You can rename your Trainz data folders, meaning the "Build" folder anything you want.
+ You can disregard the old user-data.txt file since that will be recreated again.
+ You can even place them wherever you want including another hard drive if you have one and with multiple TRS versions, you can place the individual data folders under a single one such as TRS-DATA

When you start up each version, you need to select your data folder for that version.
Click on Trainz settings on the Launcher.
Click on the Install tab
Click on the ... on the right.

A Windows Explorer window will open up.

Browse to where you copied your data-folder to for that version, i.e. TRS-DATA\
Click on the TRS_19 folder, if that's what you renamed your TRS19 Build folder to.
Click Select, or Select Folder depending upon the version.

The window will close and an "Update translation tables" process will run and you can restart.

If all goes well, when you restart that version again, your existing database will be found and you won't need to log or set your graphics options in since that information is already there.

Repeat this for each version after testing to ensure everything is intact.

Using a separate hard disk from your boot location is highly recommended. I keep my test versions on my D: drive under a single folder TRS-DATA just as I showed above and my working PLUS data on my F: drive. This will make backing up data as well as editing content if you need to so much easier and reduces the risk of losing content due to a trashed boot drive that needs to be formatted.

I never bother with imaging software and copy the Trainz data-folder(s) to an external back up drive using Tera Copy or Fast Copy. This makes copying data between machines easy and also accessing old data should I need to restore an older version of a route or session I didn't back up separately to a CDP.

Thanks John, I will give it a shot.