How to install TT 2018 on drive other than C?

[fischerdf]

The help answers say it can be done but does not explain how. My C drives is small & most non-Windows software is installed on E drive. I'm running Win 10. Is there any way to do this other than mapping the drive as a directory on my C drive? If I do that I'm not sure if I would have to reinstall my existing software & that would be annoying & time-consuming. Any ideas? Thanks, Denise

[Carl]

Basically, the program must be installed on the primary drive. To be more accurate, the program must "think and believe" it is installed on the primary drive. This is actually easy once you know how. But it's not something that one learns through osmosis. Kinda like riding a bicycle.  Mapping a drive to a directory on your C: drive is easier than  you may think, and doesn't require you to re-install "anything". The trick is, you have to map the "entire" drive to a directory on the C: drive. You can't just map a directory on the other hard drive.

Now you can do this with your existing Drive E: and then "put it back" when done. THe only drawback is, any programs currently installed on Drive E will not work, while you're using this for TurboTax. So do you have some other external hard drive or big enough USB flash drive we can do this with, that's got nothing on it at the moment? This is easiest if we can start with a blank, unformatted external drive, or one that you don't mind re-formatting and losing everything on.

Let me know which path you want to take here.

[fischerdf]

Hello Carl,

Thank you for your reply. With your information I tried a few things & ended up installing on my USB external drive; not my preferred choice, as I now have 3 locations with programs, but it works. I didn't have to have an empty drive, but it's where I prefer to keep most data files. The drive that TTax didn't like was my SD card, where I install most programs. Strange that it would easily accept an external USB but not an SD card in a slot. Obviously, something in the program that I can't change. The program is a bit slower this way But it's tolerable.

When you said I wouldn't be able to access other programs on the preferred drive while TT was running I knew that would be a problem; my anti-malware is there.

I'm fairly computer literate but have never mapped a drive for anything other than keeping the drive letter, so I'm glad I asked.

Thanks & All my best,

Denise

[fischerdf]

Carl,

Just an update for anyone following this. I ended up installing on my USB hard drive, My Passport, not a removable thumb drive. I just tried different paths, nothing unusual, until one was accepted. HTH Having just installed my 2019 software to the same drive, I thought this might be helpful to someone.

Denise

[SteamTrain]

@fischerdf 

Some folks have had some problems with having it installed on an external usb-connected hard drive.  Maybe not right away in npormal use, and I don't remember the details, but I think it had something to do with device address remapping (or some such) if the usb-drive was ejected & shut down while the computer was running.  Just reconnecting it didn't work.. I think rebooting the entire computer with the usb-drive connected would fix it...but again..the details are hazy and I may be way off about what was happening.

[BroMattMiller]

Just now purchased a PC download of TT 2019 from Amazon.  My Win10 notebook has a very small C drive and a micro SD card for D.  D is where I (attempt to) install apps.  The TT 2019 installer refused to install anywhere on D.  Finally I launched a command window as Administrator and created a junction point:

mklink /J c:\TurboTax d:\TurboTax

Then I was able to tell the installer to use c:\TurboTax, and it successfully installed under d:\TurboTax.

After the first launch TT was unable to update itself, saying it didn't have access to the executable which it thought to be under the C drive.  I did "Start->Add or Remove Programs->TurboTax->Uninstall" then selected the option to "Repair."  After the repair completed I was able to update TT.