Installation - install and update folders taking up too much HD space

[GaryOrrMBI]

As the title suggests, this is concerning the sheer amount of space taken up by the installers and service pack installers for my Autodesk products.

As it stands right now 25% of my 1tb hard drive is taken up by Autodesk installers contained in C:\Autodesk\Access and C:\Autodesk\WI with some more, albeit smaller, "backups" stored under C:\Autodesk\IM

This is more storage than is being used by all of my installed programs and their related data (C:\Program Files, C:\Program Files (x86) and C:\ProgramData).

The first thought is to simply delete all of that garbage and give my computer some breathing space. But we all know that if a future update is built badly it will want to have the original installer available and uninstallers often go awry if the original installer is not found.

So, what's the answer?

The answer should be that those folders are temporary and are deleted after the respective installation is complete and they are not required by future update installers or by the uninstaller. If the argument is put forth that information from the old installer is absolutely necessary to ensure success of future installs and/or uninstalls then Autodesk, now that everything installs from their website anyway, should look there for whatever oddball piece of information the function needs to do it's job.

I know, I know... this is a peer-to-peer user forum and this post has become more of a complaint (since the only user suggestions possible are either: delete the old installers and deal with the consequences later, or buy a larger hard drive, or format my drive and start over... and none of those are actual solutions to the actual problem). Autodesk employees don't monitor, blah, blah, blah (which is B.S., they're here, they monitor, they post, they promote new products, so they could also take initiative and start getting some of these types of issues before their development counterparts).

Rant over.

If anyone does have some insight as to how to manage this issue other than those listed above, then I look forward to hearing such.

-G

[pendean]

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@GaryOrrMBI wrote:

....But we all know that if a future update is built badly it will want to have the original installer available and uninstallers often go awry if the original installer is not found.

....

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That has not been a "thing" in quite some time now. Old-school information.

[GaryOrrMBI]

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@pendean wrote:

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@GaryOrrMBI wrote:

....But we all know that if a future update is built badly it will want to have the original installer available and uninstallers often go awry if the original installer is not found.

....

---

That has not been a "thing" in quite some time now. Old-school information.

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@pendean,

I can't dispute the "Old-school" information. I have been dealing with Revit since 2008 and AutoCAD (and other Autodesk software) since 1997.

This has burned me many times in the past and I may very well be simply speaking from that experience and without updated information to rely on.

I do know that I have seen that dialog asking to specify the "Location of..." within the last year or so, but I do not remember which specific Autodesk product, version, or plug-in generated it, or even which computer it was on (only that it was while applying multiple updates).

With the confidence of your reply, I would have to assume that it was possibly related to a Revit plug-in that hadn't been an Autodesk component for very long and perhaps not yet had it's installer fully converted or rebuilt to whatever new process/ procedures/ standards Autodesk might be using to keep this from happening (and meet your statement of this being "Old-School", and therefore outdated information)... It may even have been while installing an old Autodesk update (stored on our local network) on an old (and no longer officially supported) software version. As I type this, I seem to be leaning towards it having been an update to Revit 2019 (or one of it's plug-ins) that I had to have available for a specific need back at the beginning of this year.

But, that last is guesswork on my part whereas my original "Once bitten, Twice shy" concerns come straight from many years of experience 🙂

I don't know how many hours I have had to spend over the years trying to find an installer for product "X" so I have something to point an update installer to.

I thank you for your response and will give due consideration to your comment.

-G

[Simon_Weel]

If you create a deployment to install the whole thing, then it won't create a local 'Autodesk' folder. And although the deployment folder can grow quite big, the advantage is you can choose where to store it. The deployment folder we use for the 2024 version of AutoCAD, 3DS, Revit, Navisworks and ReCap is about 70 GB  - including updates.