is it possible to instal Visual studio on one drive and later relocate it all to the other drive?

[Jonas_28]

hello, i currently have a 120gb ssd (C) and later i will buy a 240gb ssd (D). as the topic says, is it possible to install on disk C, then relocate all of it to disk D? if not, how much can i relocate and will the projects work? thank you a lot in advance

 

[13thmonkey]

yes/no. Yes you can do it, i'd shrink the partition, create a new partition in that space, label it as drive g: (for example). Install it to g:\program files\...

Then when you get your new drive, copy that partition to the new drive, delete the original, expand the smaller drives partition to fill the space, rename the partition on the new drive as g:, and expand that to fill the whole drive.

As far as your OS is concerned it was installed on g:\ and it still is, the fact that it is on a different physical disk is not relevant.

But it's all a bit of a faff.

 

[Jonas_28]

yes/no. Yes you can do it, i'd shrink the partition, create a new partition in that space, label it as drive g: (for example). Install it to g:\program files\...

Then when you get your new drive, copy that partition to the new drive, delete the original, expand the smaller drives partition to fill the space, rename the partition on the new drive as g:, and expand that to fill the whole drive.

As far as your OS is concerned it was installed on g:\ and it still is, the fact that it is on a different physical disk is not relevant.

But it's all a bit of a faff.

why exactly is it a bit of a faff? there are no downsides right? thank u for helping by the wsy

 

[13thmonkey]

shrinking and expanding partitions is not something to be done lightly (there is risk), you're creating a whole new partition for just one program (initially, more will follow I imagine) which is the faff bit. if you're familiar with all of the techniques it's not a problem.

 

[randomizer]

It's probably simpler and safer to just uninstall it and then reinstall it in the new location. Your projects will be left wherever you put them whichever option you choose (unless you put them inside the VS installation folder).

Don't forget that depending on your version of VS and the installation options you've chosen it may install a tonne of dependencies (MSSQL, a dozen VC++ redists, IIS Express, etc.). If you want to move these as well then the partition juggle is simpler. Otherwise you'll need to uninstall all of these one at a time. If you're using VS 2017 it's probably not a big deal because it tends to install fewer dependencies if you were picky about what features to install. Anything older and it's a real pain.