Why is this software using up all the space on my C: Drive ???

[awakenedbyowls]

Having computer issues right now on account of my C Drive being maxxed out !!! 

I looked into this and there's about 60GB of something in some .affinity folder - 60GB of what?

I have a measly 250GB SSD on this PC along with a 2GB HD which is where I store all my documents relating to Affinity - I can't be having this software dumping a load of unnecessary crap in there - anyone know what might be going on here and how to fix it?

I've got all my games and stuff installed on my HD and only a few things on the SSD - I see the Affinity Suite is one of them - is there a reason why this has to be installed there? The main programs only takes a few GB so it's not a problem but if it's going to be taking up 60GB in the background then I'd rather it was on my HDD

How do I install and use this V2 suite properly because it's been a bit of a mystery since I upgraded - I'd like some say in where things are going on my computer!

[awakenedbyowls]

I found the culprit - some file called PersonaBackstore.dat

So what do I do with that - just delete it?

How do I stop this happening again???

This is not good - asides from all the lag I'm getting (which may be my computer or maybe THIS could be what's causing issues on some game I also play?)

[awakenedbyowls]

A restart seems to have got rid

How do I set things to use my HDD for this?

[Pšenda]

32 minutes ago, awakenedbyowls said:

How do I set things to use my HDD for this?

Installing applications (MSI/EXE) on another disk.

Edited April 5 by Pšenda

[awakenedbyowls]

1 minute ago, Pšenda said:

Installing applications (MSI/EXE) on another disk.

How do I set it so PersonaBackstore.dat is saved on my HDD - the main software can live on my C Drive

[Pšenda]

15 minutes ago, Pšenda said:

Installing applications (MSI/EXE) on another disk.

I did not notice that the file is not stored in the installation directory - the full path is not shown on the screenshot (it is only in the file properties).

[walt.farrell]

58 minutes ago, Pšenda said:

I did not notice that the file is not stored in the installation directory - the full path is not shown on the screenshot (it is only in the file properties).

Enough is shown in the screenshot, to show that it's in the .affinity directory, such is all that's really needed for a solution. 

@awakenedbyowls: The .affinity directory is located in your Windows %USERPROFILE% directory, which is located on your C drive. You can move the .affinity directory, though it's probably not technically a supported configuration if you do so. 

When I've done this I've used symlinks, and it has worked acceptably for me. There's a set of instructions in the post below. Use the V2 instructions (second set): 

With symlinks there's a small performance hit, but not enough that I've found it to be noticeable. You could  use a hardlink instead, and avoid that performance overhead, but I haven't tried it myself so i don't have any written instructions.

 

 

[awakenedbyowls]

16 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

The .affinity directory is located in your Windows %USERPROFILE% directory, which is located on your C drive. You can move the .affinity directory, though it's probably not technically a supported configuration if you do so. 

When I've done this I've used symlinks, and it has worked acceptably for me. There's a set of instructions in the post below. Use the V2 instructions (second set): 

That all sounds like a lot of tinkering under the hood - I don't know what you mean by "supported configuration" but if it means I stand a better chance of recovering files after a crash then I could just keep in mind not to let that file get too bloated - the app has crashed a couple of times in the past few days but that may be me using some previous documents containing a ridiculous amount of enormous pixel layers

Alternatively maybe I could just uninstall everything and reinstall all of it on my HDD - I guess this involves one of the two different installers I don't really understand ?

[NotMyFault]

The “backupstore” is always located in you user profile, unrelated where the App itself is installed.

[awakenedbyowls]

7 minutes ago, NotMyFault said:

The “backupstore” is always located in you user profile, unrelated where the App itself is installed.

I'm sure this won't be an issue again if I'm careful and try to work a bit tidier

58gb still seems a bit excessive though - I really don't know how it ended up that large

[Martyn Folkes]

I assume "backupstore" is for file recovery. It may be worth trying to increase the File Recovery Interval in Performance Settings in case it stores more than one copy of each file. It may also be worth lowering the Undo Limit, in case the history is also stored in there. Also, it may make sense not to have too many unsaved modified files open at once.

(I may be wrong -- just guessing here).

[Bit Disappointed]

⏸️

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, awakenedbyowls said:

Alternatively maybe I could just uninstall everything and reinstall all of it on my HDD - I guess this involves one of the two different installers I don't really understand ?

As @NotMyFault said, by default that file (along with your other user data such as installed brushes, assets, styles, etc.) is always on drive C. Unless you tinker around under the covers (as I mentioned above) you have no choice about where it goes, even if you install the program someplace else.

1 hour ago, awakenedbyowls said:

That all sounds like a lot of tinkering under the hood - I don't know what you mean by "supported configuration"

Yes, it is tinkering under the hood. And by not being a supported configuration I mean that if following that recipe to setup symlinks or hardlinks causes something within Affinity to stop working, Serif might say "you shouldn't have done that, and we aren't going to modify the program to allow it".

However, so far it has not caused any problems for me, and in the one case where I did find a program problem with that setup they fixed it because they agreed it was a bug.

And, other than replacing your SSD with a larger one, or removing some other data from your C drive, it's the only thing you can do if that data is causing you to run out of space on your C drive.

[awakenedbyowls]

Me and tinkering under the hood of computers doesn't usually end well

[lphilpot]

19 hours ago, awakenedbyowls said:

Me and tinkering under the hood of computers doesn't usually end well

It shouldn't be hard. Offhand I don't recall the syntax for creating a symlink on Windows, but it's not hard. Generically, the process would be something like:

1. Make sure no Affinity app is running.
2. Move the actual folders to wherever there's room, i.e., the new location (or copy then delete the original, just to be safe)
3. In the original location, create a symlink(s) with the same exact name as the folder(s) you moved / deleted, but pointing to the new location instead

Now when Windows, Photo, whatever, accesses those folders it will actually be accessing the ones in the new location, but it'll never know the difference. This technique is used all over the place by unix / Linux (in fact by many OSes).

[walt.farrell]

4 minutes ago, lphilpot said:

Offhand I don't recall the syntax for creating a symlink on Windows,

See my linked post above

[lphilpot]

13 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

See my linked post above

Ah ha... I'll blame it on trying to pack for our eclipse trip while replying...  🙂

 

[awakenedbyowls]

9 minutes ago, lphilpot said:

Ah ha... I'll blame it on trying to pack for our eclipse trip while replying...  🙂

 

Nice

I saw the one in 1999 in Reims in France - highly recommend it

[lphilpot]

1 hour ago, awakenedbyowls said:

I saw the one in 1999 in Reims in France - highly recommend it

Every time I think about the crowds I lose all enthusiasm for the trip. After all, it's only 4 minutes out of an entire week... But we're paid up, so might as well go.

[David in Яuislip]

On 4/5/2024 at 4:08 PM, awakenedbyowls said:

I found the culprit - some file called PersonaBackstore.dat

There could well be more

Powershell users can use this script. I got fed up with the lousy housekeeping so wrote this to report the extent of the crime. It's been extended and my version will delete the junk but I'm not sharing that in case it causes an eclipse or worse

CheckAffinityClutterV1.ps1

[debraspicher]

3 hours ago, lphilpot said:

Every time I think about the crowds I lose all enthusiasm for the trip. After all, it's only 4 minutes out of an entire week... But we're paid up, so might as well go.

It'll be worth it, I think. Looks like cloudy weather here. We are planning to drive but it may not matter.

[R C-R]

4 hours ago, debraspicher said:

Looks like cloudy weather here.

Same here in N. Texas; probably so overcast that we won't be able to see much of anything except a dark sky. 

[lphilpot]

Then again, as I recall you Texans got to see Comet McNaught (C/2006 P1) in the daytime during early 2007 while farther east we were totally overcast for the entire apparition. And that's way cooler than an eclipse. 🙂

[debraspicher]

3 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Same here in N. Texas; probably so overcast that we won't be able to see much of anything except a dark sky. 

We may head that direction and hope there's a clearing. But if not, it's a day to get out and have a small adventure. On the plus side, I have filters now I can use for future solar shots...

@Iphilpot I would've been living in the NE at the time (my husband's home state), but I do remember that. I don't think I have any photographs of it, just my memory.

On topic:
@awakenedbyowls If you are making use of OneDrive (built into Windows) at all, it is possible to move that to another disk as I have for every install of Windows. So that may free up quite a bit of space if you're using that a lot. I know not everyone uses it but surprisingly some I have talked to have, so I do often suggest that when system disk storage becomes a problem. I have never kept mine on the system drive (C:) as I'm on the 365 plan and I have quite a bit stored on it.

[R C-R]

11 hours ago, debraspicher said:

We may head that direction and hope there's a clearing. But if not, it's a day to get out and have a small adventure. On the plus side, I have filters now I can use for future solar shots...

According to a DFW TV station's usually reliable weather people, you would need to drive up north to just south of Little Rock, Arkansas for the best chance of a clear sky during the eclipse. The quickest route would probably be to take I-30.

Several weeks ago we bought a 6 pack of 'eclipse glasses' from Amazon that supposedly were NASA approved so we could give a few pair away. Then about 4 days ago we got a notice from Amazon that they were not safe & they were refunding out money, so we ordered a 12 pack of ones that were (because they did not have anything left in smaller quantities) which arrived late Saturday night.

So now we have enough to give away a bunch of them, but I'm not sure anybody will be interested.