What is the best way to add temporary space for test purposes on a DM?
You would most likely want to do this on a test machine to perform a test import of a large number of documents before importing them on a production DM. The files for documents are stored in what TechDoc calls File Areas rather than storing them in a database. A File Area is simply a Windows Path that TechDoc is allowed to store files in. Here's a snippet from the Admin Guide:
File Areas are used to store the physical files for each Generation of a Document. When a new Generation of a Document is added to the system, TechDoc looks for the most "available" File Area to place the physical file in. As storage needs grow, additional File Areas can be created at any time. Each File Area can be set to a certain reserved space limit so that TechDoc will no longer add files to an area once the free space on that area hits the limit. This allows a TechDoc File Area to coexist with other applications on the same disk or partition.
If you log in as a TechDoc Admin, you can go to the Admin page, click "File Areas" under "Show…" to see what Windows folders are being used and how much is still available to TechDoc.
As far as increasing space, you have two options:
- Add another disk drive to the machine and then create a new File Area on that drive. Say the new drive is K:, then you would probably create a new File Area pointing to K:\DmFiles. We recommend "\DmFiles" for the directory name as a general convention to make it easier to know you are looking at a TechDoc file area when you are looking at it from inside Windows. You can actually call the folder anything. We recommend only one File Area per drive as it doesn’t make sense to have 2 file areas on one drive anyway since they would be competing for the same space.
- Increase the size of one or more of the disks that are already being used for file areas.
Both options work. One thing to consider is that if the expansion is only for temporary use, I would trying to use option 2. Especially in a VM world, it is usually easy to change the size of virtual disks. You can expand the disk from the VM host side, make sure it is expanded inside the VM client OS side, and then TechDoc will automatically use it. No TechDoc changes necessary. Once the temporary use is done, delete the test documents, and then reduce the disk size. Again, no TechDoc changes. If you use option 1, other files besides the test files may be placed on it and then you can’t remove the new disk and new File Area until the other files are relocated or deleted. It is much more cumbersome to use option 1 for a temporary expansion.