Running Adobe CS applications from a partition other than the startup volume

Posted by Pierre Igot in: Macintosh
February 22nd, 2005 • 7:36 am

Until today, I thought that it was impossible to run Adobe CS applications such as Photoshop CS, Illustrator CS, etc. from a partition other than the startup volume.

The reason for this was that, each time I had to reinstall my Mac OS X system, if I tried to launch an Adobe CS application that was located on a partition other than the Mac OS X volume, I would get an error message about the application being “damaged” or whatever.

The problem is not with running Adobe CS applications from another partition once they have been installed on the startup volume. You can just copy the application’s folder to another volume and launch it from there.

The problem is with all the other files that Adobe installs in various places and that get erased when you do a clean reinstall of Mac OS X.

In the past, I have tried archiving the Adobe preference files located in my home library folder before doing a clean install of Mac OS X and putting them back there after that, but that is not enough and doesn’t solve the problem.

I thought that it was probably a problem with an invisible file containing the software’s serial number or something. In theory, the application launched from another volume could just ask for the serial number again after a clean install — like some other applications with similar protection do. But that would probably be too much to ask of Adobe.

So I figured that there was nothing that could be done about it and just resigned myself to having to reinstall Adobe CS from the original CDs with the horrible installer every time I had to do a clean install of Mac OS X.

Then today I had to do a clean install of Mac OS X again and, this time, I tried archiving and restoring everything on the startup volume that I thought had to do with Adobe CS. And it worked! I was able to launch the Adobe CS applications from another partition after that without having to run the installer!

Here’s a complete list of all the stuff on my startup volume that I archived before the Mac OS X clean install and restored after the install:

In the main library folder (the “Library” folder at the root level on the startup volume):

  • In “Application Support“: the entire “Adobe” folder
  • In “Fonts“: the 32 files that are part of the WarnockPro font that gets automatically installed when you run the Adobe CS installer
  • In “ScriptingAdditions“: the file called “Adobe Unit Types
    (NOTE: There might not be a folder called “ScriptingAdditions” in your main library folder after a clean install of Mac OS X, in which case you can just create one and put the Adobe file inside.)

In your home folder (your user folder on the startup volume):

  • In the “Applications” folder: the folder called “Install Adobe Creative Suite
    (NOTES: 1) There might not be a folder called “Applications” in your home library folder after a clean install of Mac OS X, in which case you can just create one and put the Adobe folder inside. 2) The folder is actually called “Install Adobe Creative Suite” followed by the special “f” symbol in italics that is sometimes used to differentiate folders from files in the Mac OS naming convention, but I cannot reproduce this symbol with the ISO-Latin1 character set used for this web page.)

In your home library folder (the “Library” folder inside your user folder on the startup volume):

  • In the library folder itself: the folder called “Acrobat User Data
  • In the “Application Support” folder: the entire “Adobe” folder
  • In the “Preferences” folder:
    • the “ACE2Cache” file
    • the “Acrobat” folder
    • the “Acrobat WebCapture Cookies” file
    • the “Adobe” folder
    • the “Adobe Illustrator CS Settings” folder
    • the “Adobe InDesign” folder
    • the “Adobe Photoshop CS Settings” folder
    • the “AdobeUM” folder
    • the “com.adobe.Acrobat.Pro6.0.plist” file
  • In the “Receipts” folder: the folder called “com.adobe.Acrobat.Pro
    (NOTE: There might not be a folder called “Receipts” in your home library folder after a clean install of Mac OS X, in which case you can just create one and put the Adobe folder inside.)

That’s it! That’s all I archived and restored anyway, and that seems to have done the trick. If you make sure you archive and restore the above files and folders when you do a clean install of Mac OS X on your startup volume, then you can run the Adobe CS applications themselves from another partition and do not need to reinstall them after the system installation.

Now, it is quite probable that some of these files or folders do not need to be archived and restored. (It’s even possible that one of them — the “ACE2Cache” one — has nothing to do with Adobe, but I don’t know that.) But I am not about to try and find out the hard way, by archiving and restoring only some of them and seeing what happens. I’ll just keeping archiving and restoring these whenever I do a clean install.

It is also quite telling, I would say, that Adobe leaves some many files in so many different places and uses such inconsistent/obscure file naming conventions. In many respects, Adobe have become the new Microsoft, at least when it comes to the lack of user-friendliness and flexibility of the installation process.


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