How do I solve this?
I want DOPUS on an ssd that holds a bunch of other utilities. I want it to SAVE its settings in its directory, just like the portable version does. I want this, because I have been restoring old images of windows quite frequently lately, and it's a major pain in the rear to have to remember to export DOPUS settings all the time. I would sincerely appreciate being able to have portable behavior on a non-usb drive, so it's one less thing to worry about.
I already tried exporting to USB and then oh-so-cleverly moving the files to my ssd. It started complaining about certificates after a short while.
There has to be some way to accomplish this. Right?
While the portable version can be copied to a HDD, it will always require a USB device (e.g. memory stick) to be plugged in and acting as a "dongle".
So you could do what you want to do, but you'd need to plug a USB stick in and first export Opus to it, selecting the "use a as a dongle" option. You could then copy Opus from it to somewhere else, but would need to keep the USB stick plugged in (even if Opus is no longer on it) for the copy to work.
Note that portable versions of Opus are slightly more limited in terms of Explorer Replacement and a few other things. You can edit the .ini file that is part of the export to enable some things that are not normally enabled with portable installs (since they require registering DLLs or similar registry changes, which people usually do not want with a portable version), but a proper install is generally a better choice if it is your main machine.
If the only reason you want to do this is because of the configuration, remember that the important parts of the configuration are all stored in one folder already. (There are other two folders but they are not that important, especially if we're talking about events like reinstalling Windows. Cache data and last-used lists, window positions, etc..)
So if I understand correctly, I can simply install the regular version to my ssd and configuration of shortcuts and functions will still persist, regardless of whether the system partition gets repeatedly wiped?
I'm not terribly worried about recently used files and such, but of course favorites and all these things should stay.
The ssd is not the system partition (it's another ssd), but the system user profile is stored on the system partition. Which gets destroyed rather frequently of late.
You'd need to backup the settings folder (or the whole profile folder).
Or create a junction from the settings folder to the second drive. That might be best if you want something that you can't forget to do after it's too late. (You might forget to re-create the junction after reinstalling Windows, but you can just create it when you notice. OTOH, you don't have to remember to do anything before reinstalling Windows and blowing the main drive away, since the data will already be on the second drive.)