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Installing CC Applications on a Removable Drive

Community Beginner ,
Mar 16, 2017 Mar 16, 2017

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Seeing as I could not find any solutions to the problem of installing CC Apps on a removable drive, I'm going to share my own in case others find it helpful. In my setup, I have a 128gb external SD card in a tablet with only 32gb preinstalled. Adobe Creative Cloud manager would not let me install any programs to the SD Card (my D: drive) because it is a removable disk.

My fix involves simply mounting the external drive in an empty folder on the C: drive, so that creative cloud is unaware of the true path of the drive.

Right click on the windows menu and choose disk management.

Right click on the partition you want to install Adobe CC applications to.

Select "Change Drive Letters and Paths..."

Click Add.

Point to an empty NTFS folder on the C drive that you would like to use as your mount point. Myself, I used "C:\ExtSD"

Click OK.

Now you can select a folder on your external drive through the mount point on your C: drive, which to Adobe, simply looks like a folder.

I used "C:\ExtSD\Program Files\Adobe"

Everything installs beautifully now!

Cheers!

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New Here ,
Mar 16, 2017 Mar 16, 2017

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Sending a thank you for this easy trick.

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Adobe Employee ,
Mar 17, 2017 Mar 17, 2017

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Community Beginner ,
Mar 17, 2017 Mar 17, 2017

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Glad it helped !

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New Here ,
Feb 15, 2018 Feb 15, 2018

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this didn't work for me. It said that it can't install onto network drives.

Thanks Anyhow

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New Here ,
Feb 16, 2021 Feb 16, 2021

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same

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New Here ,
Jul 09, 2023 Jul 09, 2023

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LATEST

An easy fix to this is deleteing all files in the folder 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Adobe\caps'.
Hope this helps!

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New Here ,
Jun 08, 2018 Jun 08, 2018

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I have tried this, but it didn't work as advertised for me.  Adobe Illustrator thought it was going onto a network drive when I applied the above solution.  I tried it several different ways. 

I came up with a solution using Junction Links.  My solution seems to put all of Creative Cloud on the MicroSD card.  No guarantees, but check it out.  How to install Adobe CC Applications on a Different Tablet Drive MicroSD – Chad Bremmon

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New Here ,
Jan 09, 2019 Jan 09, 2019

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New Here ,
Jul 07, 2019 Jul 07, 2019

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I tried this but the installer would not let me change the location that CC would install to C:Program Files/Adobe was defaulted and greyed out. Is there a way to change the location?

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New Here ,
Mar 23, 2023 Mar 23, 2023

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I did the above steps as such: 

Right click on start icon and click on Disk Management. This screen appears.

InkedScreenshot 2023-03-23 183750.jpg

Right click here (SD card. Is :D). Click "Change Driver Letter and Paths." This shows up (Ignore OS :C. Already did it all. Only 😄 if you haven't). Click "Add" at bottom.

Capture.PNG

Click browse (Mount in Empty Folder is selected by default.)

Capture 2.PNG

Select "New Folder". Your :C drive will be highlighted for the drive to select the folder. It doesn't matter since this path will make anything put into the created folder go to your :D. Again, what I have highlighted is the new empty folder.

Capture 3.PNG

Click "OK" (Probaby greyed out for me since I already made the path). Your path is now made, so you can exit disk manager.

Open Adobe (Not any program but the actual service)

Click your account icon

Capture 4.PNG

Click "Preferences"

Capture 5.PNG

Click "Apps"

Capture 6.PNG

Scroll Down until you see "Install Location". Click the pencil right next to "Default". This opens your files on your computer. Scroll down and click on OS (Or whatever your :C was) The folder you created is there. Click on that then OK. It should accept it. It will now save on your 😄 while thinking it's saving on your :C. Exit Adobe.

You can move what you've already installed from Adobe on it. Open the files on your computer. Double-click your :C. Click on the "Program files" folder. Also expand the files on your :C on the right.

Capture 7.PNG

Click and drag "Adobe" to the folder you made. Everything in that folder will move to your :D.

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Explorer ,
Oct 13, 2019 Oct 13, 2019

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So this is how you can do it. You still have to mount your sd card as a link/mount point to a folder on your C: drive (say C:\SD). That's a start. Then you have to change the default installation directory to C:\SD\Program Files and C:\SD\Program Files (x86) using the methods described here:

https://www.itechtics.com/change-default-installation-folder-windows-10/

 

Some warnings - installs will hang at 89% for some reason, you just have to wait it out. The hangs would be around half an hour for me on my Microsoft Go. Also, this method won't work for Animate - you need to install to your actual hard drive or you'll get messages about the templates being corrupt.

 

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Explorer ,
Jun 28, 2020 Jun 28, 2020

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Alright, I've got a new method that is A LOT simpler. Pop in a big micro sd card, the bigger the better. Right click on the Windows Start icon and select "Disk Management". Select "Action > Create VHD". Create a suitably large VHD on your micro sd card. After this is complete, and it takes a while, look in the disk list in the bottom pane. Initialize the new disk. Format the new disk as NTFS. Go to your sd card and double click the new VHD to mount it if it isn't mounted yet. Open up Adobe Creative Cloud. Click on the gear icon in the upper right. Select Apps in the left panel. Change your install location to the VHD. That's it, that's all you have to do. You'll have to re-mount the VHD on startup but that's a lot fewer hoops to run and everything seems to work.

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Community Beginner ,
Apr 15, 2020 Apr 15, 2020

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This still works perfectly, thanks so much!

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New Here ,
May 25, 2020 May 25, 2020

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Hey, I tried this out. I  do not really know much about these things, so hope I did it correctly though, it seems it worked for other people. 

 

The file 'C:\ExtSD' is an empty file you created right? Because there was no file like that that exists on my computer, so I had to create a new empty file. 

 

Anyway I did everthying following that assumption and changed the preferences in creative cloud, to change the install location. The install location then became 'C:\ExtSD' I am still very confused lol. 

 

After doing all that, it still failed to download and said 'unable to install on a network drive'.

Please send helpppp! THANK YOU 🙂

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Explorer ,
May 25, 2020 May 25, 2020

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I happened to be get a new low end device and my method no longer works. I guess someone at Adobe must read the message boards. They must for some reason really want you to not install it on an SD Card.

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New Here ,
May 26, 2020 May 26, 2020

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😞 😞 

Thanks for responding. 

Dont know what to do now, I've got no space on my laptop and I really need inDesign to complete my project. 

 

 

 

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New Here ,
Jun 10, 2020 Jun 10, 2020

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It worked! Awesome 🙂

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New Here ,
Jan 10, 2021 Jan 10, 2021

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Works great. Thank you!

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New Here ,
Jun 18, 2021 Jun 18, 2021

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It say insufficient disk space because my main disk doesnt have enough space(I have a stupid Hp stream) but my SD does, and even though I'm downloading to the SD it says I have just as little space on there as I have on my C: but then I check my SD and it says I still have like, 499GB left.

b r u h .

anyways, if anybody knows anything on how to cheat this, pls halp.

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New Here ,
Jun 18, 2021 Jun 18, 2021

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also, adobe, if this just doesnt work at all, then Im going to stop use adobe, and sue you for the 31 dollar SD card I bought yesterday cuz my disk is full.

Have a nice day!

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