Best way to move USER folder to another drive?

dubcat · 7 Sep 2016 at 00:51

I installed Win 10 on to my SSD. I want to have my user directories (documents, downloads, music, etc) on my HDD. I found many different methods to move the user folder but I have no idea what the best way to do it is. Can anyone point me in the right direction please?

Thanks,
Dub

something daft already!! · 7 Sep 2016 at 01:10

I use one of two methods. Relative links or move the folder. To move the folder, right click on the library in question, eg Music and then select "Properties" with left click. Click on the "Location" tab and enter the required location, eg d:\users\yourname\Music and click the "move" button. This works for pretty much all library folders.

dubcat · 7 Sep 2016 at 01:21

Thanks. That is the method I used too. However, seeing all these other complicated methods on the web lead me to believe that perhaps I had been doing it wrong. Sounds like that is not the case!

Thanks again.

jpaul · 7 Sep 2016 at 09:31

When you said USER folder, personally I would not move the 'Appdata' and 'Application Data' and other sytem folders, just Documents/Downloads/Music/Pictures and like, but maybe that was all you were planning ?
my concerns for former,would be correctly copying permissions, what happens if that partition is down, and any junctions being correctly copied.
The 'recursive' junction 'C:\Users\admin\AppData\Local\Application data' can be problematic too

archerz · 7 Sep 2016 at 09:41

i usually do it likethis.. maybe not the desktop though

dubcat · 7 Sep 2016 at 11:06

Thanks guys - yeah i just moved the Contacts, Desktop, Downloads, etc. Seems to be working fine.

One thing I do have a concern with is as follows. I had the same setup before. My HDD with the folders as above crashed but the SSD with the OS on it was fine. I could not boot windows (i guess because the user folders were on crashed drive?). Is this working as intended? If so, it seems you really do increase your probability of having to reinstall windows quite significantly by moving those directories to a second drive.

something daft already!! · 7 Sep 2016 at 11:13

I've had an SSD and stored my files on a HDD for about 5 years now. Backup your folder structure so if the drive fails you can reinstate.

bledd · 7 Sep 2016 at 12:13

The location method is the safest and best method.

Any other method (ie, redirecting the whole folder) results in a broken profile if you remove that other drive.

darael · 7 Sep 2016 at 12:27

I've used the above method for a long time and never encountered any problems in doing so. If anything, I prefer knowing my data is already on the harddrive should I need to reinstall. :cool:

IT Troll · 8 Sep 2016 at 16:11

The right-click Location move method is the only method supported by Microsoft. This is all I use now.

In the past, when SSDs were smaller/expensive, I moved the whole User folder to another drive and then used a junction to fool Windows. Whilst this does work you can then run into problems with O/S updates and upgrades. Sometimes these can fail (with an obscure error) because of the way they try to access the user folder. The only way to get them to install was to reinstate the standard User folder temporarily.

If you just use the Location method you don't have any of these problems when upgrading.

jpaul · 8 Sep 2016 at 18:27

can you move the whole user folder with the location method , or just sub-folders. ?
(it is the hidden folders - not shown in archerz's post - that are the potential problems)

IT Troll · 8 Sep 2016 at 23:38

No it is just the main user sub folders; documents / pictures / music / video / desktop / downloads / contacts / favorites / etc.

bledd · 9 Sep 2016 at 07:56

I prefer to keep Application Data folder on the SSD. Although it can grow a little large, there lots of small files in here used by applications. So you want this folder to be as fast as possible.

FatRakoon · 11 Sep 2016 at 01:30

I have done it by simply selecting MOVE in the properties too.

If I only have 1 drive then I will partition and have Windows on a small partition, and D: on the rest of it usually, but since going SSD with all my PCs, its a better option to just have windows on that and everything else on my main drives.

I only setup the Documents, Music, Pictures, Downloads and Videos. Everything else stays on D:

I did make custom disks with XP taht let me put programs etc to D:\Program Files\ instead of on C: and that was sort of semi ok, but mostly useless, unless the C: was tiny. With 120GB I find that its fine.

I know that it can be done through the registry and I did have a .REG file to do it with XP and so, I am sure it can be done with 7+ too surely?

That would be handy for idiots like me, cos I uninstall and reinstall on my machines all the bloody time! - Im doing one right now!

marc2003 · 11 Sep 2016 at 02:00

You can cut/paste multiple folders directly from C:\users\you directly to d:\ or wherever. It automatically updates everything under the hood properly. I've done it for years with windows 7/8.1. I know it works on 10 too because I did run it for a short while before going back to 8.1.