I’m a friend of symlinks when it comes to this. I keep my files on another drive/location, but I keep the software using them agnostic of this fact.
I can run innstallers using default settings, I don’t need to adjust configs in any programs or XML files etc.
- I install stuff regularly at first and see if it makes sense to move it afterwards
- I then move the stuff to a special location on a large and fast drive
- I remove the original location and replace it by a symbolic link to the new location
On Windows, you do this by using an elevated cmd and the “mklink /j” command. E.g “mkdir /j C:\location D:\some\other\location”
It’s useful to have one central place to keep symlinked contents, and to name the folders there resembling the location they represent, so that you can stay in good control over the setup in the long term.
