CODEWITHSUNDEEP
visual-studio
Cornel
Cornel

Reputation:

Change Visual Studio installation folder after install

I'm running out of space on the partition that has Visual Studio installed. It's safe to copy the installation in another partition?

Upvotes: 15

Views: 34453

Answers (5)

vmTim
vmTim

Reputation: 69

Alternate solution, if you've installed it to, say F:, but now want it on the disk that's currently your E:, is to change the drive letter assignments.

  1. Copy the Program Files folder on F: to E:
  2. Rename F: to G:
  3. Rename E: to F:
  4. Run Visual Studio to check it works
  5. Delete ProgramFiles on G: Not such a neat solution as using hard links, but once it's done there's no long-term side effects other than all your other files on those drives suddenly moving.

Upvotes: 0

Jake Hall
Jake Hall

Reputation: 2102

You could move the files to the new location (manually) and then use Junction (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896768.aspx) to create a link back. I did that with 2012 and it seems to be working for me.

Upvotes: 13

Andrei
Andrei

Reputation: 2342

I tried repairing or modifying it via the installer (add remove programs), because I moved it to another Partition. But nothing, it crashes with weird error reports.
Uninstalling and reinstalling seems the only choice, but that doesn't work either...

I used a USB Stick, gave it the old HDD label and made a junction like described here:
https://superuser.com/questions/484061/how-to-create-an-ntfs-junction 

mklink /J <new directory to be linked> <target directory>

D:\>mklink /J "Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0" "K:\Program Files\Mic
rosoft Visual Studio 11.0"

This doesn't work unfortunately because VS still complains about other missing files, but it at least let's you unistall it.

EDIT: If you try to reinstall VS and it won't let you choose a different folder look here at the accepted answer: How to change Visual Studio 2012 install directory?

Upvotes: 1

Aidan Fitzpatrick
Aidan Fitzpatrick

Reputation: 2035

No, that wouldn't work with any newer versions of Visual Studio. If it's pre-2003 you might have a chance.

Upvotes: -1

Dirk Vollmar
Dirk Vollmar

Reputation: 176269

Without having tried I bet this isn't possible.

Installation folders are typically stored in many places such as config files and the registry. After moving, all these references will still point to the old and now invalid location. And, even worse, moving the folder will also break any installation / uninstallation / update routines which means that you will no longer be able to install patches and service packs.

Conclusion: You are way better off uninstalling Visual Studio and moving it to the new location. It takes only a short time as compared to the headache that you would end up otherwise.

(Or, if you don't like to do that you can of course still mount a new partition to the program files folder to increase disc space or get a larger hard drive)

Upvotes: 4

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