Reinstalling windows and documents on 2 different hard drives

mistercrabb · 14 Jun 2011 at 12:49

Hi,
I'm thinking of buying a 60GB SSD drive, as my machine is a bit slow at the moment. I have a ~600GB hard drive at the moment (actually 2 smaller drives in RAID 0) but it doesn't run that fast and I'm slowly filling it up.

Is it easy to install windows on the SSD, but have all the user folders on the other drive?
Ideally I'd like Windows and all of my important programs on the SSD, but I don't want 20GB of assorted music wasting that space.

So it would be something like:
C:/Windows/
D:/Users/etc

Easy/Hard?
An online guide or something would be great though, thanks

RJC · 14 Jun 2011 at 13:01

Thats what I have done, I have the operating system on the SSD and the mechanical hard drive with my Documents on.

Way I done this after install right click each file ie My Documents, My Music etc which was installed during the installation and change the directory to the other disc.

Other members might come up with a different way.

mistercrabb · 14 Jun 2011 at 18:22

That's my backup plan, I was wondering if there were any other ways to do it though..
I mean, I do silly things like store backups on my desktop, so I'd prefer it if the whole /users directory was on the other drive really.

But after a bit of googling, this might be what I'm looking for: http://superuser.com/questions/53029/mount-second-drive-as-c-users-in-windows-7

I guess we shall find out when I buy an SSD

bledd · 15 Jun 2011 at 11:27

You literally just need to click Start, YourUsername

Then right click each folder, Properties, Location and type in a new location (ie D:\Documents, D:\Videos\, D:\Music, D:\Desktop etc)

It will move any files currently in there to the new folder

I prefer keeping the actual user folder on C:\ (for the user apps folder to stay on the SSD)

Just in case one day you remove your D:\ , this way, your install won't be screwed, you'll just be missing your desktop/documents etc

skanky · 15 Jun 2011 at 11:47

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=19302825&postcount=10

FatRakoon · 19 Jun 2011 at 04:20

I personally keep everything as normal, but all my programs go onto D:\Programs with the exception of system utilities like DeFraggers / AntiVirus etc... They still go on C:\Programs and all my games go into D:\Games

I never bother with the Media folder as I have all my music on E:\ all nicely sorted into the correct folders E:\MP3\ E:\Movies-DivX E:\Movies-Series and so on, although I do use the Documents, Pictures, Videos and Music folders as normal for current stuff but I move them out after I have used them.

I did some experimental Installation Disks with XP a while back, with forcing the Documetns and the Program Folders onto D: or E: just for kicks and it was fun, but ultimately silly so I soon stopped doing it, however, I know of a couple of people who took that idea to be superior to the all your eggs in one basket of putting everything onto one Drive and they like the idea and have done it for years.

Mattus · 19 Jun 2011 at 15:32

Yup, dead easy. I have \Desktop, \Downloads, \Music, \Pictures and \Video on a separate partition, plus \Programs and \Games. Moving the \Users folder itself is apparently much more difficult, but you'd probably want to keep that on the SSD anyway.