does CS4 really use 16GB of space?
 

I have 15.4 GB free on my system drive. I just got CS4 and the requirements say that it needs 16GB free space plus more for temp files during installation. Is this a minimal install? I don't necesarrily need to install all additional media content and I do not want to have to get a bigger hard drive at this time. I have tons of space on media drives.....hmm.....could I do a custom install on a different drive? What kind of issue would that cause?

thanks!

I don't know how large you system drive is, but allowing it to have less than 10-15% free is a recipe for disaster. Proceed at your own risk.

the size of cs4 master on my machine after instal is 10.3. even though this would fit onto your drive i personally would not install it on that drive. while you could install cs4 on one of your media drives it would start to make things get messy and clutter up the drives. not to mention the fact that your media response would slow down while the machine tries to read both the media and the program files.

Marty, rather than doing a custom install of an application to a media drive, I'd suggest moving non-application documents such as pictures, MP3s and what have you to the media drives to make room on your system drive. Lowered performance is a side effect of both an overfilled system drive as well as an application living on the media drive it's trying to access.

I actually have a 3 Disk Raid Array that is solely for archiving projects. It is setup in a RAID 5 with redundancy. I do not run any projects from this array, it is strictly for storage and is seperate from my system drive and media drives.

My system drive is an 80GB drive, which has been more than enough for a long time for just programs. Nothing other than I actually have been running for over a year with only 2-3GB available without issues. That was with CS3 taking up 13GBs to push it to that limit. Now, to clear up space, I moved my digital juice library to a different disk and cleared up 15.4GB in prep for CS4.

My swap file is on a different drive also so that is not an issue either. I could clone my drive and move the OS to a bigger one but that takes some time and I don't have that luxury at the moment.

Thanks for your replies. I really just wanted to know if 16GB was the minimum install or not.

Pictures and Mp3s are almost non-existent on my system drive. As I posted already, a custom install of CS4 would not be to the same drives that I hold the media on. It would be to a RAID dedicated to backups. So, other than accessing CS4, no other data would be being accessed from here.

I am more concerned with compatability of plugins and such seeing as the patht the CS4 would be "non-standard" and I am trying to anticipate these problems with everyones help rahter than discover them in the middle of a client's project.

Thanks for the clarification Marty. And yeah, 80GB is PRETTY LEAN these days for a system drive, what with the install size of most of the apps we use these days.

I remember my first edit bay: 9GB system drive. Ran FCP, Photoshop, Cleaner, Illustrator and who knows what else and STILL had "tons" of room.

Exactly. In fact, I only used around 50GB for a all my applications and all digital juice preview installed. Then, CS3 was the first to eat up GIGS and GIGS. I am indeed due for a bigger drive now but don't have time for a migration until I finish this project, which requires, you guessed it, CS4.

I have never bothered to upgrade my system drive for 4-5 years now because 80GB was plenty! I guess the times they are a changing!

Interesting. I have just did a custom install CS4, with PP, Bridge and Encore, but not with the OnLocation and the learning CD and it took 4.5GB for the Program files. Obviously Project Files and Video are above and beyond that.

I have run some SD through it Ok, but haven't had time for trying HD yet.

Not sure what hte missing 5.5GB will do for me!!

Cheers, Ian

I don`t remember exactly, because I removed some components from my already stripped-down install of CS4, but it had all the apps installed and the footprint was nowhere near 16 GB. I think it was around 5 gigs. You don`t have to install 2,5 gigs of After Effects sample projects and templates, or 3 gigs of Soundbooth scores.