The absurdity of "Common Files"

I just installed Arconis, and I noticed something so utterly baffling that I just had to come here and post about it.

It stands to reason that when one is installing True Image or Disk Director, one may already be experiencing disk troubles. It follows that one might go through extra precautions when installing a new program. For instance, rather than installing it on one's regular Windows partition, one might prefer to write the 200+ MB Arconis installation to another drive.

But no! No matter what install directory you choose during the Arconis installation, even if it's on a completely separate drive, Arconis will cheerily try to dump the hefty majority of its data into Program Files\Common Files\Arconis !

There's really no particular reason why these files have to go into that specific directory, now is there? Yes, it's not the only program that stores stuff in Common Files, but most of the other ones on my system at least have a minimal footprint in that area, and like I said, when you're having disk problems, it's the last time you want a program to start doing something unexpected.

 

Whether you consider this good, bad or indifferent, it is the reason that I don't bother or recommend putting the OS and applications in different partitions. Installation is more than just registry entires which end up in C anyway. My exception to this rule is very large games that rarely change like Flight Simulator.

I like knowing that when I image C, I have it all (except for the big games and I don't get concerned about them).

 

I second both.

User files should (could) be saved on another partition, but preferably a different drive. Especially with all the P2P going on nowadays. The rest of the software should go where its being directed to by the installer. With drivespace being so cheap today there is no good excuse for copying even one file out of the directory specified during installation. It might be that developers have adopted this behavior due to MS but to me... it feels wrong.