Can I change the Installation Directories used by Avid Link

[Scruby]

I don't install things in my C drive as it only really has space for Windows, I have installed Avid Link (to the C drive) but don't want it to install anything else there. Is there a way I can move it's installation directory so it installs Pro Tools onto a different drive?

Thanks in advance.

[Darryl Ramm]

Nope. Pro Tools needs to be in C: Nothing you can do about that.

Avid Link is a mess of an app, many of us uninstall it/just manually install Pro Tools by downloading installers from your Avid.com account. But none of that changes you need to install Pro Tools in C:

All Pro Tools plugins Avid or third party also need to be in their default location on C: The only thing you can change is the location of samples that any sample based VIs are using. You can generally put them anywhere and different plugins will all have different ways of telling the plugin where their sample libraries are. But for modern systems with NVMe SSD based boot drives, a good location for those samples may well also be the C: drive.

[albee1952]

+1 to everything Darryl said. If your current C: drive is too small, its usually very easy to replace your drive with a new(and larger) drive. Evey Windows laptop I have ever had has had a simple cover to access the hard drive(usually with 4 screws). Then, there are several ways to clone the new drive from the old drive, so you run the clone and swap drives and everything works as before(but with more available drive space). Samsung drives come with free software to do just this, though its really handy to haven external drive case so you can have old and new drives connected at the same time. Of course, with a desktop PC, it gets even easier On my own PC's over several years, I have been fine with 500GB system drives, but I keep sessions and sample libraries on their own separate drives(this WAS for performance, but now modern SSD's are much more capable). Obviously, if you want/need to keep sample libraries on your C: drive, then go bigger

[Scruby]

Originally Posted by albee1952

+1 to everything Darryl said. If your current C: drive is too small, its usually very easy to replace your drive with a new(and larger) drive. Evey Windows laptop I have ever had has had a simple cover to access the hard drive(usually with 4 screws). Then, there are several ways to clone the new drive from the old drive, so you run the clone and swap drives and everything works as before(but with more available drive space). Samsung drives come with free software to do just this, though its really handy to haven external drive case so you can have old and new drives connected at the same time. Of course, with a desktop PC, it gets even easier On my own PC's over several years, I have been fine with 500GB system drives, but I keep sessions and sample libraries on their own separate drives(this WAS for performance, but now modern SSD's are much more capable). Obviously, if you want/need to keep sample libraries on your C: drive, then go bigger

Thanks for the suggestion, while my C drive is the smallest on my system, its a pretty high speed NVMe. Unfortinately getting a larger one of a similar speed isn't within my budget ATM so I'd be sacrificing a lot in getting a larger one.
For other software that needs to be in the C drive, I've been using Symbolic Link directories and its been a successful workaround for everything but Avid since for whatever reason Avid Link throws up error 2330 whenever it tries to search a symbolic directory.
With that said, it is specifically Avid Link's proprietary installer that hates sym-links. I'll try the method Daryll suggested, as conventional installers do work with symbolic directories.
Thanks again for the input :)

[SCOOKE04]

Installing the current running version of Pro Tools on the C: drive is OK, but what takes up a crazy amount of space is that Avid Link also puts its downloads folder on the C: drive - and the installation files for multiple versions accumulate here.
It's a pity that Avid don't allow the location of this software repository to be relocated - or at least delete versions that are no longer in use.

Doing all the updates manually is an option and works well for updates to the main software, but the Avid downloads page doesn't always make it very obvious when plugins have been updated. Avis Link is a very useful idea, it just needs to work better ...

[albee1952]

Many of us simply uninstall Avid Link as soon as we complete a new install of PT. And I tend to immediately move downloads off to a separate drive to save space(my C: drive is 500GB and it doesn't take much to fill it up).