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Proper Way to Tell Windows to put user profiles and documents on D:

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Perryg114

Senior member
What is the proper way to get Windows XP to put Documents and settings on another drive besides the one the OS is installed on. Usually I just set the My Documents target as "D:" but Documents and Settings and your desktop still stay on C:. Also if you just put the Target as D: it does not create a sub directory called My Documents. It will put them so you get D:\my music or D:\my photos etc. There must be an easier way to just tell Windows to put all user settings and data on D drive.

Same Question with Win 7 how do you do it?

I want to repartition my Win7 laptops so when I get all the photos movies and other crap on there that I don't have to back all that up just to backup the OS.

How do I get the D colon simley faces to go away?

Perry
 
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It think the entire folder option of her209's link is what I am looking for but it looks like a pain to implement. Our work machines are setup with the documents and settings stuff on D drive. That way the IT guys can Nuke C drive and all your programs and they don't don't have to setup the user accounts again etc. Also the data is separate from the OS so that does not have to be backed up as well.

Perry
 
I understand what you are getting at. Personally, I rarely use the Documents folder for anything. I put all my data folders (financial, word processing, etc. on a separate RAID 1 array. That way I can nuke the C drive and not lose any data. That can be done easily within the host application. There is no requirement to store files in Documents. Example, Microsoft Office will put documents anywhere you tell it to.

A good office solution is to use NAS (Network Attached Storage) for all mission critical files and data folders.
 
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Well there are so many applications now that just by default put stuff in My Docments that I got tired of fighting the system. It is just easier to put in a bunch of sub folders in My Documents to organize things. I tried to put My Documents where it is easy to backup. I put alot of temporary stuff on the desktop and it tends to stay there way longer than it should. Desktop still lives on C drive and it is buried in Documents and settings and as such is hard to deal with.

Perry
 
Win 7 is a frigging mess. My Documents is a sub folder to Libraries and there does not appear to be an option to move Libraries to D drive. The my music and my pictures are no longer in My Documents but are in Libraries. Documents and settings is locked and it won't let me in. So I need to move libraries to D drive and preferably Documents and settings. Seems like this is something they should make a frigging wizard for. This should be a basic feature. I don't know if any other way to keep the OS separate from data during backups without doing something like this. I don't want to have to backup 500G of data to backup 10G of operating system. Yeah I can put data in D manually but there is always some program that is going to put crap in the default directories or even buried further in Documents and settings. Zune is one of these programs that puts files all over the place.

Why does Microsoft go to so much trouble to change things without providing any benefit. Sorry for the rant but this seems like common sense. I guess there are not many programmers that are INTJ's.

Perry
 
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In Windows XP, Microsoft provided a method to move the user profile data (My Documents, My Pictures, My Music) from the ( C: ) system drive to a secondary partition or drive ( D : ). That method is provided here.

Unfortunately, this method is not thorough enough to also transfer the files on the Desktop to the secondary partition or drive ( D : ).

Here is my preferred method to transfer the user files to a secondary partition. This method includes the Desktop. This method involves manually copying the data from the system drive on ( C: ) to a second partition or drive ( D : ). Then the Environment Variables need to be modified. The following process will transfer all the user's documents, music, videos as well as the Desktop.


Windows XP: Procedure to transfer user profile data from system partition/drive ( C: ) to another partition/drive ( D : )
You can transfer all the user's personal files to the D : partition by following this procedure:
  1. copy C: \Documents and Settings\* D : \WinXP\
  2. Then login as each user on the system and go to:
    right-click My Computer, select Properties, select Advanced tab, select Environment Variables button at bottom,
    in the "User variables for <username>" section, create a variable named "USERPROFILE" and give it the value "D : \WinXP\<username>".
  3. In the "System variables" section, create a variable named "ALLUSERSPROFILE" and give it the value "D : \WinXP\All Users".
  4. If you desire, you may hide the D : \WinXP folder. Right-click and select Properties, then give it the "Hidden" attribute, but only for that folder and not for its subfolders.





In Windows 7, the process is much easier. Microsoft made a few good changes.
  • The user files have been moved from the traditional C: \Documents and Settings\ to C: \Users\.
  • The User/Program data has been moved to C: \Program Data\.
  • The original method for transferring user data through the Properties dialog for user documents has a Location tab that may be altered for each of the user folders:
    • Contacts
    • Desktop
    • Downloads
    • Favorites
    • Links
    • My Documents
    • My Music
    • My Pictures
    • My Videos
    • Saved Games
    • Searches

User_Profile.jpg


Desktop_Properties.jpg


  1. Select the Start Window Circle in the lower left corner of the desktop.
  2. Select the account username in the top right of the menu. (directly underneath is Documents, Pictures, Music, ...)
  3. You will open a window with each of the user folders listed.
  4. Right-click each of these user folders, select Properties, then select the Location tab.
  5. For the Desktop, you will see C: \Users\<username>\Desktop.
  6. Change this to D : \<Win7>\<username>\Desktop.
  7. A dialog will ask you if you wish to copy all user files within this folder to the new folder. I expect you will want to copy these files to the new folder.

That is all that needed to copy the user files from the ( C: ) drive to a secondary partition. It appears that Microsoft has paid attention to some of our needs as individual users and implemented these little tools to make our own customizations more efficient. I really like this change since it makes my job much easier when rebuilding a system.
 
It seems like there should be a better way in Win 7 to put all user libraries on D drive without having to go into each sub folder and specify the location. Use to be you set a target for My Documents and all the other BS like my music, my videos etc was in there. Why can't I specify the location of the root folder so all the stuff goes there at once instead of this peacemeal stuff. Why did they make My Documents a sub folder when it use to be the root for all user data for a given account. Now only office documents live in My Documents. Also I had to be logged in to a given account to change the location of the user libraries. I also had to have admin rights to set target locations. Trying to change admin rights on accounts was like pulling teeth. It was giving me a dirty message saying it is not a good idea to change accounts to admin. It would let me click a box to change to admin but it would not let me hit accept.

What bothers me is that some program is going to put stuff in one of the dozen or so subfolders that I forgot to change the location on. Some are on C drive and some are on D drive. It makes backup up and organizing data very hard to do. If I have to nuke the operating system and install from a backup image any recent data written to any one of ten different places could get lost. Multiply this by the number of accounts on a system and you have a real mess.

So you see now I have to specify the location of all the sub folders where in XP all I had to do was change the target of My Documents. Am I missing something here?

Perry
 
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I am certainly not the best qualified person to provide MS Windows configuration advice. I am merely a software developer with high interest in hardware and system configuration. There may be better methods for transferring the User Profile to another partition that I am not aware of. Such information would be welcomed. However, this thread has had over 300 views and no one has added to my suggestions.
 
I use the default Documents folder has a slush file for temporary storage until I decide whether or not I want to permanently keep the files. Permanent files go on a different drive, and my applications that use the files look at that drive first. It's not really what you're looking for, but it's a different way of approaching the problem.
 
I used this method to create a junction between C:\Users\kalrith and D:\Users\kalrith. After doing that, C:\Users\kalrith is simply a shortcut to D:\Users\kalrith. Everything went really smoothly. I can access my user files by going to either the C: drive or D: drive; however, my profile takes up 0 space on the C: drive.

Edit: In case you don't want to go to that website or have a hard time finding the instructions, this is how to do it:

  1. Prepare your 2nd hard drive (or whatever destination you’ve chosen) and pick whatever folder you want to “junction” to.
  2. Log out of your user profile and log back in under a different account. If you don’t have a 2nd account, just create one temporarily. Remember to give it full administrator power over your computer or you won’t be able to proceed!
  3. Move EVERYTHING out of your old user profile directory to your new profile directory (e.g., move everything from C:\Users\UserName-Temp). Don’t just copy the files, you need to move them, because you can’t create a junction if a folder by the same name already exists. Your user profile folder is C:\Documents and Settings\UserName if you’re using XP, or C:\Users\UserName if you’re using Vista or Windows 7. Make sure you move hidden and system files, too!
    Note:     if you run into trouble moving the files (for example, Windows tells you that files are still “in use”) you may need to reboot into “Safe Mode” to make sure there are no programs/services that are locking files that you want to move.
  4. Once you’ve moved all your files, rename your old user profile directory – it doesn’t matter to what, just as long as it’s different (e.g., rename it to C:\Users\UserName.old). After you’re done with the junction and you’re sure everything is working right, you can delete your old user profile directory – just make sure it is REALLY empty before you delete it!!! (Make sure to check for hidden and system files!)
  5. Open a command prompt (Start > Run > cmd will do the trick) and create the junction with the command: mklink /J C:\Users\UserName D:\Users\UserName
    (If youare using Windows XP or earlier, you won’t have the mklink command on your computer – you can use the Sysinternals junction tool to do the same thing. The command line is a little bit different, so be sure to make that adjustment!)
    Note: if you are using Windows Vista or Windows 7, you will probably have to right-click the command prompt and choose Run as Administrator.
  6. Now you can log out of this “temporary” user and back in as your regular user account. (You can delete the temporary account, as we’re done using it.)
 
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The current state of how windows software saves things is a mess. Some programs save to the desktop, some to documents, some to downloads, others to libraries. I installed an application and went to look for something in program files, the applications wasn't there, instead it was installed to app data folder. If that isn't enough there is also the program data folder. MS just needs to confess , they mean for things to just go wherever.
 
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