Changing Application Data folders.

DL402

Member
Jan 15, 2006
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So I heard a long time ago that it's much cleaner to have 2 petitions, one for your OS and one for data. The problem is I only have an 80GB harddrive, and assigned my OS partition around 14GB.
A lot of programs save data in:
C : \Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data
C : \Documents and Settings\DL\Local Settings\Application Data

and they take up a lot of space, so I literally only have around 400mb left on my OS partition, so when I try to install something sometimes it needs the temporary space on the OS partition but it may not have enough, along with I'm thinking this is causing my system to bog down.

Now is there a way to change the location of where this data is saved, preferably to my other partition D : ?
 

ElenaP

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Dec 25, 2009
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www.ReclaiMe.com
Consider reassigning the temp folders to D: drive.

To do this, open Control Panel, System settings. Then find "Environment variables" under "Advanced" (this varies depending on OS version). In Environment variables, change all TEMP and TMP, both in User and System variables to D:\TEMP. Make sure you
1. note where the original settings pointed to
2. create that D:\TEMP.

After the reboot, the temp files should be stored on D:.
Review the folders that were originally designated as temp, and delete whatever files are there.
 

DL402

Member
Jan 15, 2006
112
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0
Consider reassigning the temp folders to D: drive.

To do this, open Control Panel, System settings. Then find "Environment variables" under "Advanced" (this varies depending on OS version). In Environment variables, change all TEMP and TMP, both in User and System variables to D:\TEMP. Make sure you
1. note where the original settings pointed to
2. create that D:\TEMP.

After the reboot, the temp files should be stored on D:.
Review the folders that were originally designated as temp, and delete whatever files are there.

Thanks this was what I was looking for but I'm not familiar with the syntax it provides.

When I click edit value for User Variable of temp it's: %USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Temp
For system variable: %SystemRoot%\TEMP

What do I type to change that to just D:\? Is it possible to just type D:\? I was confused since for C:\ it had the %USERPROFILE% AND %SYSTEMROOT%, so would I need to know a special name for the D:\?
 

Devilpapaya

Member
Apr 11, 2010
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In theory, yes you should be able to set it to just d:\temp. The % notation is simply an abbreviated directory path. I.E.

%USERPROFILE%\local settings\temp = c:\users\<your name>\local Settings\temp

and

%systemroot%\TEMP = c:\windows\system32\temp

So as long as changing this correctly propagates the setting across any program looking for the directory you should be good to go.