Need help locating certain PS system files

[thetexan]

I have my c drive imaged and quite often reload the image to reset the system after doing various computer experimenting. It's alot easier to just reset the system and only takes 5 minutes.

The problem is that photoshop stores all of its presets, brushes, keyboard shortcuts, etc somewhere on the c drive. Can I store that somewhere else on my d or e drive so I dont loose the files when I reload or if I knew where and what they were, couldnt I simply make a copy before reloading, then put them back afterwards?

Where are these important files and folders?

Can I globally change the default locations to another drive?

thanks,

tex

 

[Tom Mann]

http://bit.ly/1d0d6UU - very first hit

HTH,

Tom M

 

[Tom Mann]

PS - I don't think you can change the default locations, but I could be wrong about that, especially if you are good at hacking the registry. Instead, I would suggest just making up a BAT file to copy all the files to and from a temporary storage location when you are restoring c: from an image.

PPS - Wow, 5 minutes to restore a drive from an image, either you don't have much software on it, or your are imaging/restoring to and from SSDs, LOL. I just went through that exercise and it took about 4 hours to restore my c: drive from an image. It is about 400 Gig of programs, no user data. :-(

 

[Hoogle]

I am not saying you have to go to the extremes I do but as someone who upgrades and changes computers a lot I hate the process of activating adobe creative suite every time I change computers or hard drives.

So here are my tips for smooth running of adobe products. you dont have to do it I know it is a bit tech savvy to some people. Hard drives are cheap, decent mainboards have 4 to 8 sata ports so excluding a dvd writer or 2 that leaves you with at least 2 sata ports for hard drives.

I have 2 ssd drives on my system 1 which is 120 gb kingston drive which is my c drive that has my os installed and programs such as maya and cinema 4d, office etc.

My 2nd ssd is a 60 Gb samsung pro ssd its pure reason for exsistance is to have adobe creative cloud installed on it.

I have a small 320 gb samsung spinpoint regular hdd partitioned into 3 1 x 60 gb 1 x 120 gb and 1 x 140 gb give or take actual available space after partitioning. This 1 drive is purely there to hold images of my c drive and my D drive basically my ssd the spare 140 gbs is my adobe scratch disk I also have a mirrored version of this hard drive that is not attached to my computer and is stored in a safe place incase things go wrong I can just swap it.

To make sure my work flow is fast as possible I do not install fonts brushes, patterns, styles, actions, shapes, color swatches etc into photoshop. I only load them into photoshop or any other app when needed using programs such as suitcase fusion which is a font manager all my stock images and resources such as fonts etc are on a dedicated resources partition on my local PC and also on a network drive so they can be accessed from my laptop either when I am home or anywhere in the world with internet access via remote access.

installing lots of fonts brushes etc into windows and photoshop just slows it down and really no need to do it, if you watch closely when loading up photoshop it says initialising fonts, brushes etc so if you have a large collection installed then obviously photoshop will take a longer time to load.

So in answer to your question yes you can load anything you want to any drive even installing programs even on ssd it still takes me 15 mins to format down my c drive and mirror the image back but that is a lot quicker than installing windows (all though windows 8 only takes about 15 mins to install on an i7 and ssd) what was time consuming was the reinstallation and activation of my programs and plugins Topaz being a pain as it needs your license keys put into every product oh why dont they just have a master installer and license...

but like I say I am anal when it comes to computers and being able to get all my hardware at trade price r bargains online I have easy access to tbs of hdd if needed most of my hdd space is back ups of other hdds etc which is the main jobs of my 8 Tb raid nas setup.

I lost some important files once due to hdd failure that mistake will never be made again.....

 

[ibclare]

After you read this, take two aspirin and call Hoogle in the morning.

JK, great info Hoogle, thanks. Even as low tech as I am, a lot of it makes sense and I think I may try to use your advice -- some of it.

 

[besmirched]

the spare 140 gbs is my adobe scratch disk

Have you considered using a dinky ssd 64gb or less as a scratch disk?