Installing Vegas Pro Suite 356 on a separate HD from the OS. I have a supper fast M.2 HD and would love to have it installed there, but I do not get a custom install option.
OS HD: Samsung M.2 SSD 980 PRO 2TB
Programs HD: Samsung M.2 9100 Pro 2TB
This is from ChatGTP. I've used this method for other applications such as Video Pro X. Use at your own risk! ⚠️ 3. Use a symbolic link (“directory junction”) trick This is the most reliable workaround for stubborn installers that always install to C:\Program Files or C:\Program Files (x86). How it works You let the installer think it's writing to C:\Program Files\AppName, but the data is actually stored on another drive. Steps Install the app normally first (to create its folder), or note the folder it will use. Uninstall the app. Create a folder on another drive, for example: D:\Apps\AppName Create a junction that redirects the original folder path to your desired drive: Open Command Prompt (Admin): mklink /J "C:\Program Files\AppName" "D:\Apps\AppName" Install the app again — it will now install to D: while thinking it's using C:.
To install Vegas Pro on a drive other than the C drive, the target drive install option should be available during the early stages of the install process. After choosing the language, the next screen during installation should be:
Click on 'Change Default Settings' and then the next window ...
... should have 'Select target paths' where you can choose another drive other than the default C drive.
I do not know if the other programs that come with the Suite version offer a choice of drives, and I don't think that VP23's DLMs offer a destination choice (certainly the one I just tried didn't).
1) I would save an image of the O/S and back up the data that's on the two drives.
2) Swap the function of the two drives.
REM If I was really, really, really bored.
REM I'm not fond of the practice of spraying application programs all over Hells half-acre.
3) Loop to 1
I was able to install the Vegas Pro Suite 356 to the D: drive during the installation process. It was a few steps into the process, but right after it finished preparing the downloaded installation file you get the option as stated above by Dexcon.
Thanks all for your suggestions.
Vegas heavily utilizes data, user, and documents folders which are also on the OS disk by default. You might want to use the more general approach suggested here to relocate those folders to a dedicated drive which will benefit all your apps:
I find specifying the program folder location during a Vegas install more useful when I want to install different builds of a Vegas version on the same machine. But I do those installs with a different Windows login... using a different login insures that the install gets unique user folders used by Vegas for temp, caching, layouts, and settings.
@J-Toresen I only globally moved the downloads folder myself because it was running me out of space on my boot drive. If the program or documents folders got too big, I would have moved them too. Moving those folders is easier than taking out the boot drive and copying and enlarging the partition on a bigger device and hope it still boots.
To run different builds of the same Vegas version on the same machine, I created a separate windows login called VegasOld so I could get to special builds like vp21 builds 108 and 208. I needed them for a decade of older projects using a Canon xf305 camera that recorded HD422 format which got all messed up in Vegas till the last of the vp22 updates when it finally got fixed. The issue has been fixed since then but it took over a year. Giving those installs a different name in the program folder than the default, using the procedure described earlier, is a handy way to separate the executable folders. I didn't know about that myself at the time so I did a default install of b108, renamed it to a unique different name, and did the same thing with b208. I just had to make sure I set up shortcuts pointed into each program folder. And use the VegasOld login before I ran them. That let me continue installing vp21 updates hoping it would get fixed. I don't think there's any other way to keep Vegas stuff in the user folder for different builds of the same Vegas version from stepping on one another. I didn't have any issues running b108 and 208 from the same windows login, otherwise I would have had to make separate logins for each.