Question: I have a SSD as my primary (C:) drive, mainly used for quickly loading games. 

It's pretty small (~30 GB) so I want to keep things that don't really need a speed boost off of it. I attempted installing the Visual Studio 2010 Express beta last night, and it claimed to require 2.1 GB of space so I changed the install directory to a secondary, non-SSD drive.

After this, the installer said that it would use 1.8 GB on C: and ~200 MB on the secondary drive. 

While this token gesture of moving 1/10 of the app to the place I told it to is cute, I really want to install everything I can to the secondary drive. 

**Is there any way to install all of Visual Studio 2010 Express to a drive besides C:?**

Answer: 
Kind of.

The setup DVD contains a file Setup\baseline.dat. This is a large text file which stores information on where to install large chunks of the software.

You need to edit the text file and change the lines which say

> 
> DefaultPath=[ProgramFilesFolder]\VC\
> 
> 
> ...
> 
> 
> DefaultPath=[ProgramFilesFolder]\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0
> 
> 
> ...
> 
> 
> DefaultPath=[ProgramFilesFolder]\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE
> 
> 
> 

to the following

> 
> DefaultPath=D:\Applications\VS2010\VC\
> 
> 
> ...
> 
> 
> DefaultPath=D:\Applications\VS2010\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0
> 
> 
> ...
> 
> 
> DefaultPath=D:\Applications\VS2010\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE
> 
> 
> 

That will get most of the stuff off C.

This also works with VisualStudio 2005/2008 and the Express Editions. I've been using this trick for years and never encountered a problem.

n.B: Some parts of the installer also use locations such as *DefaultPath=[WindowsFolder]\assembly*. You can edit these in the same way to free up even more space, but I can't guarantee this won't break things. Obviously if you're installing from a DVD/iso you need to copy the entire contents of the DVD to a folder before editing baseline.dat, otherwise it will be read-only.
There are two ways. The easiest is just to install to C and then move the big folders over to your D drive and set up an NTFS junction to link the old location (on C) to the new one (on D).

If your SSD is so small that you cannot do that, then make the folders on your D drive first, then the junction from C to D and then install the program (pointing to the "folder" on C).

The installer will probably complain the the folder you are trying to install to already exists but most will happily continue anyway. 

<http://support.microsoft.com/kb/205524>