How to run Photoshop & more from an SD card
Have you ever tried to install applications like the Adobe suite to a removable device and been met with errors? This is something which has plagued ultrabook owners for quite some time and now the days of requiring large internal drives to hold your applications is over!
This solution was discovered whilst I was preparing to travel and naturally I didn’t want to have to take my bulky high powered laptop. It seemed excessive considering my work whilst away would consist of writing some code, zoom calls and a small amount of graphic design. The lightest, most travel friendly alternative was my Asus ultrabook which features a 64gb SSD (with no option for expansion.) So no room for the suite of adobe products or IDEs I needed. I got to work thinking of potential workarounds with varying levels of success until I came upon the perfect solution. See below for the steps required. Ensure you have an empty SD card to hand. This has been tested as working fine on both Windows 10 and Windows 11.
This fix has been working for us (and a couple of clients) for quite some time now, but we cannot take responsibility should you incur any loss as a result of using our guide. Always ensure any important data is backed up.
The process is as follows:
- Insert a large capacity SD card into your laptop.
- Right click on your Windows Start icon and click “Disk Management”.
- Navigate to “Action” and click “Create VHD”.
- Create your VHD within a folder, not the root of the SD card (for example, E:\\Adobe\\virtualdrive.vhd).
- Create it with enough space to hold your applications (30GB or more recommended).
- Click “OK” and wait for the drive to be created; this may take a little while.
- Once created, carefully locate the VHD in the list of disks, right click it, and select “Initialize Disk”.
- Once initialized, right click on the area of the VHD which says “Unallocated”, click “New Simple Volume”, then format it as NTFS.
- Install your applications to your new virtual hard drive. In Creative Cloud, select the Settings gear, then “Apps”, and change your install location.
But wait, there’s more!
That virtual drive would need to be initialized every time the machine is turned on. You can set it to initialize as soon as you log on using Task Scheduler:
- Go to Start and find “Task Scheduler”.
- Create a new task. Name it AdobeVHD or similar, and set the trigger as “When I Log On”.
- Where it asks you to select a program or script, enter the command below and replace the path with yours.
Mount the virtual drive at sign-in
powershell.exe -c Mount-DiskImage ‘E:\Adobe\VirtualDisk.vhd’Once created, this task will run when you log in and have your virtual drive ready for you!
We hope you found this useful. If you have a task in need of automation, contact us to discuss your requirements.