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RealAnise
Known Participant
February 24, 2025
Question

Is it actually possible to reinstall Photoshop anywhere but the C drive??

  • February 24, 2025
  • 2 replies
  • 322 views

I've been trying to do this for many months but always ended up too confused and intimidated to go further. So no matter how dumb this question is, I have to ask it. My C drive has absolutely no space left. Disk cleanup, etc., does almost nothing to free up space. There just isn't any left and the drive is too small. I don't know when I'll be able to replace it with a much larger drive and move everything, including the OS. I uninstalled Photoshop and now want to reinstall it on a different drive. All updates, files, etc., everything associated with it, must also go on that drive. (any files saved to the desktop computer are already in the D drive and have been for a long time.) I'm trying to do it according to the Adobe instructions ("Change the install location of your Creative Cloud apps"), , but it isn't working. Account, preferences, apps, install, Select Location, pick D drive, just brings up the message that it can't install to the root folder. I just don't know where to go from here. Is there actually any way to reinstall Photoshop (or eventually reinstall any of the other CC apps) anywhere except the C drive? If so, how? What are the exact steps? Again, I know how stupid all of this probably sounds, but I'm at the end of my rope.

2 replies

Trevor.Dennis
Community Expert
Trevor.DennisCommunity Expert
Community Expert
February 24, 2025

There are lots of ways to free up space on the boot drive with Windows, and the WinDirStat that @D Fosse showed you is an excellent tool for revealing where those savings might be. If you right click the system data folders (My Documents, Desktop, Downloads etc.) and choose Properties, most of them will have a Location tab which makes it super easy to relocate them.

 

There are lots of sites offering advice on how to save space, and not all of them give good advice IME, but it think you can trust Toms Hardware.

 

https://www.tomshardware.com/software/windows/11-ways-to-increase-free-disk-space-in-windows-11-or-windows-10

 

Are you comfortable with choosing the right version from the link below?  I suspect it will be the Intel 64bit.

https://windirstat.net/download.html

 

 

R
RealAniseAuthor
Known Participant
February 25, 2025

Thanks! 🙂 I will try these ideas this week, esp windirstat. I really think that I need a new primary HD, though. This one is just too small, I haven't replaced it in a long time, and at this point, there are much better and larger options.

Trevor.Dennis
Community Expert
Trevor.DennisCommunity Expert
Community Expert
February 25, 2025
quote

I really think that I need a new primary HD, though. This one is just too small, I haven't replaced it in a long time, and at this point, there are much better and larger options.


By @RealAnise

 

Lucky you are using a Windows system then, and not a Macbook.

D Fosse
Community Expert
D FosseCommunity Expert
Community Expert
February 24, 2025

Do not attempt to install on a non-system drive! It's the wrong way to go about it.

 

You only save around 2-3GB, which is absolutely negligible in this context. It's a drop in the ocean. You can free up 10-50 times that by doing a thorough cleanup on your system drive!

 

In any case, a large part of the installation will still end up in your user account on the system drive.

 

Start by running disk cleanup in Windows. That can be surprisingly effective. 

 

If you're using Bridge, purge the cache. Empty the recycle bin. Take a look around your user account. All of your applications dump things here that you probably don't need, a lot of it won't be removed again even if you uninstall the application.

 

Hibernation can be disabled, that alone can give you 10 GB or so.

 

There's an excellent free utility called WinDirStat that shows you exactly what fills up your drive and where it is.

 

And all this is just to get Photoshop installed. To actually get some work done, you need about 100-250 GB for the scratch disk. You can get away with less, say 50, if you work with small files, don't have more than one open at a time, and reduce history states to 2-3.

R
RealAniseAuthor
Known Participant
February 25, 2025

Thanks, I will try these ideas, but I think the real solution is a new primary HD. This one is several years old, and I need a much, much larger one.

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