Moving the location of the program folder

saverio

New member
Hi all,

I'm soon to be installing RC1, and I was thinking of abandoning my raid array and using the two discs thus:

Disc 1 ( ; system and page file

Disc 2 ; Programmes


I had my other discs organised thus:

Disc 3 ; my user's disc

Disc 4 ; My partner's users disc

Disc 5 ; storage / backup / and music stuff.

My question is this, how does one change the location of the programs folder so that it would read:

D:\programs instead of C:\programs?

Many thanks in advance
 

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ten, I agree and those thoughts were in the back of my mind.

I've decided to keep the program folder on the same drive as the system, and move the users to their own individual drives instead.
 

My Computer

Computer type
Laptop
Computer Manufacturer/Model Number
Lenovo
OS
Windows 7 Professional 64bit
CPU
Intel Core Quad 9550
Motherboard
Mobile Intel QM87 Express Chipset
Memory
16GB factory installed
Graphics Card(s)
NVIDIA Quadro K2100M
Sound Card
Onboard
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Apple iMac 27" display
Screen Resolution
2560 x 1440
Hard Drives
160gb factory fitted ssd
512gb pcie m2 2242 ssd
You can always just create another Program Files Folder on the other Drive and just tell programs to install there instead. it works fine. Only a few things would be put on to C: by default.
 

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My Computer

Computer Manufacturer/Model Number
Compaq Desktop
OS
Windows 7 Ultimate x64
CPU
AMD Sempron Dual Core
Memory
3GB
Graphics Card(s)
NVIDIA GeForce 6150SE nForce 430
Screen Resolution
1024x768
Hard Drives
150GB Sata
Hello saverio

Another technique that could be used to move system folders to an alternate drive is the use of Junction points, (symbolic or hard links).

This is the technique that Microsoft themselves use for redirecting the old XP folders to their new Vista and now Windows 7 equivalents.

If you are interested in the technique these links may be of use to you ....

How to move the WinSXS folder in Vista. a Single Point of Contact

PendMoves and MoveFile

Windows Sysinternals Documentation, downloads and additional resources
 

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As everyone has stated it is not a good idea.

what I do is create another partition and on every install, choose customize, and just replace the letter C with a E

You can however, change your "users" folder, but you need to do this immediately after install.

All you have to do is change your environmental variables. Click on Control panel > System, click Advanced System settings and click the advanced tab, click the Environmental settings and change the USERPROFILE path.
 

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