Cincinnatus
Member
- Joined
- Aug 2, 2015
For those of you who have SSDs, limited space, or just want to keep your user data on another drive or partition, I wanted to share the results of some experimentation as a followup to my own question on this subject.
I know that there is another method of relocating the User Profiles to another drive or directory involving edits to the registry, but having attempted that on my Windows 8 machine, I found that system updates would fail. I then used this very simple method - a combination of robocopy and mklink - which are working splendidly. It's also claimed to be reversible, should the need arise to undo this for any reason.
As always, you should take an IMAGE of your boot drive, just in case things go wrong. And of course, the usual disclaimers apply - use this method at your own risk - I accept no responsibility if for some reason it doesn't work with your system or you lose your data.
CREDITS: This is not my fix. Credit to 'NextOfWindows' (click to read their guide) for the basic idea, and other sources for the tip to use robocopy instead of xcopy with their respective switches.
Why go through all this? Simple. Most of us create more data than we're likely to have room for, especially true for those of us running SSDs which are almost invariably smaller than the drives they replace. I'd also point out that from a systems management standpoint, it's far easier to make two small backups of separate partitions (OS and Data) and archive them as needed, than having to archive one giant partition with OS and Data combined.
Hope this helps someone out!
I know that there is another method of relocating the User Profiles to another drive or directory involving edits to the registry, but having attempted that on my Windows 8 machine, I found that system updates would fail. I then used this very simple method - a combination of robocopy and mklink - which are working splendidly. It's also claimed to be reversible, should the need arise to undo this for any reason.
As always, you should take an IMAGE of your boot drive, just in case things go wrong. And of course, the usual disclaimers apply - use this method at your own risk - I accept no responsibility if for some reason it doesn't work with your system or you lose your data.
CREDITS: This is not my fix. Credit to 'NextOfWindows' (click to read their guide) for the basic idea, and other sources for the tip to use robocopy instead of xcopy with their respective switches.
- Boot to installation media. This is essential, so that the C: drive and user files are not locked.
- Select the 'Repair Your Computer' link
- Select Advanced
- Select 'Command Prompt'
- Confirm the location of your users directory, and the desired destination - depending on your machine, lettering may change depending on how and from where you boot.
- At the command prompt, issue these commands VERY CAREFULLY to ensure you have all the switches correct:
- robocopy /copyall /mir /xj C:\Users [?]:\Users (where [?] is the destination partition)
- rmdir /s /q C:\Users
- mklink /j C:\Users [?]:\Users
- Yes, Virginia - this WILL move Outlook profiles, also!
- robocopy /copyall /mir /xj C:\Users [?]:\Users (where [?] is the destination partition)
/mir tells robocopy to mirror the directories, which will copy all files
/xj tells robocopy not to follow junction points
/copyall will copy all the attributes, including ACL and Owner info
/xj tells robocopy not to follow junction points
/copyall will copy all the attributes, including ACL and Owner info
Why go through all this? Simple. Most of us create more data than we're likely to have room for, especially true for those of us running SSDs which are almost invariably smaller than the drives they replace. I'd also point out that from a systems management standpoint, it's far easier to make two small backups of separate partitions (OS and Data) and archive them as needed, than having to archive one giant partition with OS and Data combined.
Hope this helps someone out!
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