Change default drive that Premiere Elements uses for all its files

[Woodmonger]

I'm using Premiere Elements ver 18 on Windows 11. It by default installed an "Adobe" folder within my C drive Documents folder and stores everything within subfolders at this location; Video Previews PRV files, Auto-Save files, prel project files, etc. These end up taking a significant amount of space (over 37GB) on my C: drive. While I can live with this if need be, I would prefer that all these files were stored on my D drive (which is also a solid state drive). Is there some easy way to tell Premiere Elements to use the D drive and I can just move all my current Adobe folder contents over to that drive? Thanks.

[Ann Bens]

Edit > Preferences > Scratch Disks.

[Woodmonger]

Thanks. I was hoping it would be as simple as that. I noticed that all these "ScratchDisks" were pointing to the same folder (Adobe\Premier Elements\18.0\ in my case), so I assume the program takes care of sorting the various file types into their correct subfolders automatically, rather than to having to list each subfolder individually in the ScratchDisk path (i.e \Adobe Premiere Elements Video Previews, \Adobe Premiere Elements Auto-Save, etc.).

[Ann Bens]

You need to set them all.

[Woodmonger]

So in my case, I should set each one to D:\Adobe\Premier Elements\18.0\ ?  (Currently each one is set to C:\users\Woodmonger\Documents\Adobe\Premiere Elements\18.0\)

[Woodmonger]

Ok. I just copied all my data from my old Premiere Elements folder to my D drive and changed all the ScratchDisk locations to the D drive as per my above post. After closing the program, I also deleted the Premiere Elements folder on my C drive. When restarting the program, it just made a new Premiere Elements\18.0\ folder on the C drive. I guess it needs to have this folder in which it places the file 'My new video project.prel' as well as an empty Layouts subfolder. So far, so good. One remaining problem.

Once I save a project to my D:\Adobe\Premiere Elements\18.0\ location, then the program will default to the new location for future saves during that session. However, if I close and re-open the program, it reverts back to defaulting to the original C drive location for saves. Is there a way to make it permanently default to my D drive location for all project saves?

[Bill Sprague]

I don't install Premiere Elements very often so a bit of this is from memory.   There are three parts to file management.  

First, where the program lives is determined when you install it.  I'm pretty sure it can be installed on any internal drive, but not an external drive.   

Second, the scratch disks can be set to anywhere.  My choice is always "same as project".  All but one is "sticky" and remembered from project to project.  

Third is the project it self.  You need to start a new project from the file menu.  When you do, you get t name it and specify the location. 

My workflow summary:

1.  Create a folder for the project with the operating system.

2.  Create folders in the master folders for the various assets and output.

3.  Open Premiere Elements

4.  Start a new project with a new name in the new folder.

5.  Make sure the scratch disk files are all "Same as Project".

6.  Do the editing with frequent "Save As" names with sequential numbers so I can get back to a working point if I screw up.

7.  Output the various versions of the video to the project folder.

8.  Copy the entire folder, with all its parts, to external drives for backup. 

Doing this ensures I don't have surprise random files in places I don't expect!

[Woodmonger]

Thank you for the helpful project flow. It seems to have several advantages. I just did a little "test" run and things seemed to work smoothly. I was a little hesitant to place my original assets into the master folder, since these can be rather large files and I might use the same asset in multiple projects. But I'll try it with my reasoning being that I can always archive my master folder onto my media drive once the project is finished, thus freeing up the SSD space. I could also just use placeholder files for larger video assets that point me to the archive location of the needed master video file assets. Thanks again for your input.

[Bill Sprague]

 I was a little hesitant to place my original assets into the master folder, since these can be rather large files and I might use the same asset in multiple projects.

No!  I never work with original files, only copies and those originals are always backed up somewhere safe.  Video files are large!  But storage space keeps getting cheaper.