Windows 7 move user folders to another drive

When scouring the net for hours on a method of relocating the entire Users directory in Windows 7 on another partition, most of the methods were not good. They mostly involved nasty registry editing and dummy accounts, and had quirks that could cause potential issues further down the line.

Eventually, I came across a brilliant method on tuts4tech by a user named "ohdannyboy". It's utterly flawless, and makes use of symlinks. It's simple, and you can just forget about it after it's done. Everything takes care of itself. The only quirk is that accessing the Users folder from the C: drive for example appears as "C:" when it's actually on "D:". But this appears to be the intentional behaviour of symlinks.

Several months on for me, and it's like nothing was ever changed. Unfortunately, that post no longer seems to be there the site crashed shortly after, and I think they had to resort to backups or something.

It's too good a method to let it disappear. It's also best to do this on a clean install of Windows, unless you don't mind waiting awhile I've read all I could find about this, and the information below is correct and tested:.

To most easily move all user files and user program files off your boot drive an SSD in my case , follow these instructions. This thread is locked. You can follow the question or vote as helpful, but you cannot reply to this thread. I have the same question Report abuse. Details required :. Cancel Submit. This setting can be used to keep system data separate from user data. If Windows is re-installed on the system volume, a user who has administrative rights can manually recover data from this location.

Caution Using ProfilesDirectory to redirect folders to a drive other than the system volume blocks upgrades. Using ProfilesDirectory to point to a directory that is not the system volume will block SKU upgrades and upgrades to future versions of Windows.

The servicing stack does not handle cross-volume transactions, and it blocks upgrades. The ProgramData setting specifies the path of the program data folder. Important These settings should be used only in a test environment. By changing the default location of the user profile directories or program data folders to a volume other than the System volume, you cannot service your Windows installation.

Microsoft recommends that you do not change the location of the user profile directories or program data folders. This is especially true for Microsoft Store apps. Note If you use the unattend settings to set up the operating systems that are listed in this article, we will provide commercially reasonable efforts to support your scenario.

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