moving the partition containing "my documents"

I currently have the "my documents" folder (and other folders) on a separate partition (E:) on a 2nd drive (drive 2). Drive 2 is failing (slowly) and I want to move E: off it, back to drive 1 with C:, but keeping it as a separate partition.

I plan to use Partition Wizard to copy the old E: to drive 1 and label it M:. Next I need to switch the drive letters for both partitions and reboot. When all is good, I can delete the old E: and hopefully be on my merry way.

It's been a LONG time since I created the E: partition, so I just wanted a sanity check. My eventual goal is to have my system partition on an SSD and everything else rotational. That way, system restores/etc. are independent of my data. I'll be replacing Drive 2 VERY soon and will move E: to it. I have another partition on Drive 2 and will do the same with it, but it is independent of the system pointers that "my documents" has built into it.

Can you tell me if my plan is OK?? Did I forget anything?

You'll probably need a 3rd party disk management program to partition the boot drive as I don't think Windows Disk Management will allow it. But I'm not totally sure as I've always used Acronis Disk Director for this type of thing. Once you create that other partition you can copy all the files from the E drive to that newly created partition and then use Win Disk Management to reassign drive letters so it shows up as E. Once all the is don't and you reboot the My Doc folder should be accessible just like it was before.

Create a data partition or prepare the target location for moving the User folders, then move them the same way as always using the Location tab as shown in User Folders - Change Default Location. Choose the option when offered to copy the files to the new location.

The My Documents folder and several others were moved to a new partition on another drive a long time ago. Now that drive is failing and I wanted to move THAT partition to a different drive. I just wanted a check on my process for doing that. I DO want to keep these folders on a SEPARATE partition from my system partition.

So I tried to copy the partition using Partition Wizard, but it failed (I suspect it's because of the reason the drive itself is failing), so I just copied (using Windows Explorer) all those folders to a newly created partition, swapped drive letters on the old/new partitions and re-booted. All is well.
Yes, I am already using Libraries for access to specific folders in that partition. It is a nice mechanism.

Yes, post up a screenshot first of Disk Management - Post a Screen Capture Image along with preference for how you want partitions laid out, and we will give you the steps.

Do you want a new data partition on the OS HD?

Brink said:

DocDJ,

In that case, yes you could also use the tutorial that Greg posted above to move the user folders to another location of your choice. It's the same way that you originally moved them, but at step 5, you would want to go to where they are currently located on the failing HDD instead to move them from.

User Folders - Change Default Location

Thanks Brink. I'll bookmark that for future reference.