How to Move After Effects to Another Drive Without Reinstalling

 Can I move After Effects to another drive?

Why move After Effects to another drive

After Effects is a graphics and video processing software launched by Adobe, which can perform graphics and video processing, helping users to efficiently and accurately create countless kinds of eye-catching dynamic graphics and stunning visual effects.

As mentioned above, since the default download path on Windows 10 is the C drive, many apps including After Effects are saved in the C drive which makes the C drive almost full.

However, moving programs cannot be simply copied and pasted, because sometimes copied programs don’t successfully work. In this case, you can solve it by moving After Effects to another drive. The purpose of this article is to tell you how to move After Effects to another drive without reinstalling.

Step by step: How to move After Effects to another drive

Usually, when trying to free up space on the C drive by moving an installed program to another location, many users choose to uninstall and then reinstall it. However, the data cached in the software will also be lost when the software is uninstalled. Therefore, you can use the following two methods to move After Effects to another drive without reinstalling.

│Method 1. Move After Effects to another drive via Settings

If you installed After Effects from the Microsoft Store, the easiest way to move it is via App & features of Settings. If it’s not from the Microsoft Store, Apps and features move will be greyed out. The detailed steps to install Adobe on D drive are as follows:

Step 1. Press "Windows + I" to open Settings

Step 2. Click "Apps", you can see all the installed apps displayed in the "Apps & features".

Step 3. Select the app you wish to move and click "Move", then choose D drive to store it and click "Move" to confirm this operation.

│Method 2. Move After Effects to another drive with Adobe Creative Cloud

Adobe Creative Cloud is a collection of over 20 apps and services for photography, creation, video, web and UX design, which is available on computers and mobile devices. The users of Adobe programs can manage them in this platform, please read the following steps to know how to move After Effects to another drive.

Step 1. Open Creative Cloud app and click the button in the upper right corner, then click "Preferences".

Step 2. Click the "Creative Cloud" and "Change..." to select another drive as the new location for After Effects.

Step 3. Uninstall your After Effects, and then reinstall it. After a while, it will be installed in our new location instead of the previous location.

Alternative to safely move After Effects to another drive

As you can see, the “Move” button in settings will be greyed out if After Effects isn’t installed from Microsoft Store. And, if using Adobe Creative Cloud, you can only change the location of After Effects by reinstalling. There is an easier way to solve the problem of how to move After Effects to another drive.

Regardless of where this app comes from,  the all-in-one tool AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional can easily help you change the installation location of After Effects. It allows you to move installed programs to another drive without reinstalling, and the moved program can also be restored to its original location. What’s more, it has a user-friendly interface, and you won’t be confused in the process of using it.

Besides, if you want to clean up unneeded large files, you can select the "Delete Large Files"; you can also extend the C drive by cloning HDD to a larger one, allocating free space to C drive, etc.

Before you do:
✐ If there’s no enough space on the target drive, you can free up space of it in advance.
✐ In the “App Mover” feature you can only move the program itself, if you want to know how to move After Effects project (including cache files) to another hard drive, please turn to the Further tip.

Step 1. Install and open AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional, click "Free up" in the top panel, then click "App Mover".

Step 2. Click "App Mover" in the popped new window.

Step 3. Select one partition that After Effects located and click "Next".

Step 4. Choose After Effects (Here we use Microsoft Office as an example) and select the target location, then click "Move".

Step 5. Click "OK" to execute this operation.

Further tip：Moving folders to another drive

Cache files in After Effects are temporary files that can be recreated, but those files would take up a lot of drive space. So some users who have After Effects installed on the C drive want to move their project folders to another drive to free up space on the C drive. In addition, some users prefer to install After Effects on the C drive of SSD, and save the cache file on HDD. You can refer to the following steps:

Step 1. When you see the following interface, please click "Move Folders".

Step 2. Find the cache folder of After Effects, select a new path, and click "Move".

Step 3. Click "Finish" to complete the whole operation.

Sum up

In conclusion, you can learn the three mentioned methods from this article. However, AOMEI Partition Assistant professional is easier to operate, allowing you to safely solve the problem of how to move After Effects to another drive without reinstalling. Also, it can Wipe System Disk, Migrate OS from MBR disk to GPT SSD or HDD and other advanced features. If you are a Windows Server user and are struggling to find a way to move apps, you can try the Server version.