Moving Affinity 2 Photo Program Data

[Taniwha]

Sorry if this is the wrong forum. The C Drive on my PC is a small, slow SSD, my D drive is a large fast regular disc.  If I try and open 3 Raw images or more Affinity basically locks. I have now found how to force Affinity to install on the D drive, but Affinity Program Data still installs on the C Drive. Switching on a performance monitor when loading multiple images shows that the C drive is overwhelmed. Question how to force Affinity Install to use the D Drive for Program Data. Affinity 2 Windows 10 including all latest updates. Thanks.

[walt.farrell]

Welcome to the Affinity forums.

1 hour ago, Taniwha said:

I have now found how to force Affinity to install on the D drive, but Affinity Program Data still installs on the C Drive.

It would be helpful to know how you forced the install on D. Also, which version of the installer (MSIX, or EXE/MSI) you have chosen to install

It would also be useful to know what you mean by "Affinity Program Data". For the applications installed using the EXE/MSI installer there is data in c:\ProgramData\Affinity but there is not much in V2 and it is not heavily used as far as I know.

On the other hand:

• For the EXE/MSI installer, there is data in %appdata%\affinity
• and for the MSIX installer there is data in %userprofile%\.affinity

That data is much bigger, and more frequently accessed. That data can be moved, but before providing instructions I would need to know for sure which set of instructions you need. (Also, moving it is not something that is technically "supported" by the Affinity team as far as I know. But as a user I have done both, and haven't had any visible problems. And the one odd occurrence I did find the Affinity team logged as a bug and fixed. So I consider it safe to move this data.)

 

 

[Taniwha]

On 8/16/2024 at 12:33 AM, walt.farrell said:

Welcome to the Affinity forums. Thanks  🙂 

It would be helpful to know how you forced the install on D. Also, which version of the installer (MSIX, or EXE/MSI) you have chosen to install

I used MSI /Exe which allows me to choose installation drive

On 8/16/2024 at 12:33 AM, walt.farrell said:

It would also be useful to know what you mean by "Affinity Program Data". For the applications installed using the EXE/MSI installer there is data in c:\ProgramData\Affinity but there is not much in V2 and it is not heavily used as far as I know. 

See below for snapshot of my C Drive

I agree that there doesn't seem to be a lot of data in that Program Data/Affinity folder. However just using the Performance Tool inside Windows Task Manager I can see that the C Drive is maxed out when I try and open multiple Raws.

On 8/16/2024 at 12:33 AM, walt.farrell said:

On the other hand:

• For the EXE/MSI installer, there is data in %appdata%\affinity
• and for the MSIX installer there is data in %userprofile%\.affinity

That data is much bigger, and more frequently accessed. That data can be moved, but before providing instructions I would need to know for sure which set of instructions you need. (Also, moving it is not something that is technically "supported" by the Affinity team as far as I know. But as a user I have done both, and haven't had any visible problems. And the one odd occurrence I did find the Affinity team logged as a bug and fixed. So I consider it safe to move this data.)

OK understand. I need to do something however as otherwise I am just restricted to one open Raw at a time and that's frustrating at the very least.

[walt.farrell]

Thanks, @Taniwha.

Before I get into further instructions for your problem, a forum hint: When Quoting someone and responding to the quote, you need to type your text outside (before, or more usually after) the Quote box. That makes it much easier to find your response, and makes it clear who said what. It gets very confusing when you respond inside the Quote box. 

Did you first install the MSIX, then later install the MSI/EXE? Or was the MSI/EXE the only installer you used?

[Taniwha]

Thanks Walt,

After looking to see where Affinity was originally installed, I then uninstalled the product completely and did a restart. I then installed using MSIX and fairly quickly realised that I had no option to install onto the D-Drive (Fast large) and thus uninstalled, checked that everything had gone and restarted the machine. Then I used MSI/EXE and set the install location to be on the D Drive. As a test I then repeated the exercise of loading 4 Raws into Affinity and used the Task Manager performance tool to see what was happening. The C-Drive was maxed out and Affinity effectively locked up.

I then looked at File explorer and noted that Affinity had reappeared in the Program Data folder. From this I conclude that even though MSI/EXE allows you to select an installation drive not all of the installation goes onto the selected (D-Drive). An element (That must be very resource hungry) still goes into the C Drive. Finally, apologies for apparently late responses, I'm in New Zealand and guessing you are...not 🙂

[Taniwha]

Walt,  Here is a screen capture showing resource utilisation when opening affinity with a large number of raws. Just wondering as I am a Fuji x100vi user if there is some pre-processing conversion going in in the load process?

[walt.farrell]

10 minutes ago, Taniwha said:

then looked at File explorer and noted that Affinity had reappeared in the Program Data folder. From this I conclude that even though MSI/EXE allows you to select an installation drive not all of the installation goes onto the selected (D-Drive). An element (That must be very resource hungry) still goes into the C Drive.

As I mentioned before, the C drive for the MSI/EXE installs will also have %appdata%\affinity which is large and more frequently access than ProgramData.

It can be moved, and I've described that before. The V1 instructions in this post may work for the V2 MSI/EXE installs, too: 

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/174746-affinity-photo-2-brush-and-asset-issues/&do=findComment&comment=1002664

[Taniwha]

Thanks Walt,  I will have a go at moving the app data. 

This isn't an absolute killer for me, but it sort of interferes with my workflow having to just open 2 (Max 3) RAFs at once. If you have any influence with the devs, maybe ask them to make all files go onto the same drive. 

Thanks so much for your help. Will report back shortly.

[Taniwha]

Hi again. Turning into a bit of a puzzle. I tried your instructions re Junction  to the D drive and that seemed to work. AppData is now on D. However that did not remove the load from the C Drive. Performance seems to be no better. Just tried loading six RAF images: the first appeared in 4 minutes, next one minute later, next another 1'30" and then final 3 opened at 8 minutes after loading.  I tried to delete the Affinity Folder in c/ ProgramData, but as soon as Affinity opens it re establishes those folders dynamically.

If I explore performance tools further it appears that System is by far the largest user of the C Drive, followed some distance away by Photo.exe. 

I'm about at the edge of my confidence here and will just live with the issue as I have for last 6 months.

Thanks again for help.

[walt.farrell]

11 hours ago, Taniwha said:

If you have any influence with the devs, maybe ask them to make all files go onto the same drive. 

No more influence than other users, I'm afraid.

The files go where Windows puts your %AppData% or your %UserProf% directories, depending on the kind of installer you used.