User Folders - Change Default Location

Terrific article, thanks to everyone who contributed.

The only thing I found lacking was something directed to SSD on Win7 users that discusses/suggests what we should move to our traditional-spinny D: drive without harming the SSD speed increase. I am unclear on whether it is a good idea to move everything listed in this article off the ssd... [From this article i learned what can be moved, and how to move these directories. But not: what should stay if room permits, what is regularly accessed by Win7, what directories (if moved) might make my interaction with the OS seem laggy, what directories are likely to be space hogs, etc.]

Brink said:

Hello doodyhead, and welcome to Seven Forums.

You do not see a recommendation on what should stay since it is completely up to the user and and their needs. If space permits, I would say you would get better performance leaving them on the SSD than moving them to a standard spin HDD. As for what user folders are space hogs depens entirely on how much you save to what user folder though.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

--------------------
Thanks for the reply. After purchasing a SSD, I started cleaning up the ole' hard drive in preparation for backing up data to the NAS. (Will have Win7 ultimate 64bit format the ssd and install the OS, and then i'll move my favorites and personal files to the SSD) As I was looking at individual folders in the \\users directory I was aghast at the quantity of quantity of files as well as the total capacity used. I found lots of directories and files that I had properly uninstalled, lots of curly bracket {randomletters} files, lots and lots of space-hogging files in the hidden ..\AppData\, etc.

At the same time, I investigated the recommended OS changes needed for Win7+SSD speedyness (turn off: disk defragmenter, drive indexing, system restore, hibernation, superfetch, prefetch,..). And it was the common SSD/Spinny two-drive theme (SSD C:\ drive for OS+regularly used program/user files, spinny D:\ drive for lessor used files) that brought me here wondering what I could move without incurring a performance hit. Common sense tells me that since I am the only user of my pc, that I could certainly move any \user\guest\ (or whatever) directories to the slower drive. And the gods know that I put all kinds of clutter onto my desktop that I don't need to have on my SSD. My Music, My Documents, My Pictures, My Music can all go to to the slow drive... But what else? ...I don't know enough about how Win7 uses the \profile, \roaming, \local, \locallow directories in order to know what impact moving them would have on speedyness. I think I can keep track of the files I personally save to the drive(s), what worries me is what the applications are doing in the background that I can't readily see the quantity nor capacity of files that they are saving.

So any musings on performance impact of moves would be highly appreciated.

You did not say what size your SSD is. I have an 80GB Intel on which I made 2 partitions of about 42GB and 32GB - one for the OS and one for the data. Works well for me. I would only move massive folders (e.g. Videos, Music - if you have a lot of those files) to the HDD. This is the current state - after 5 months:




PS: But install Win7 first on the SSD and then shrink C - that will make sure the Win7 installer does the proper alignment.

whs said:

You did not say what size your SSD is. I have an 80GB Intel on which I made 2 partitions of about 42GB and 32GB - one for the OS and one for the data. Works well for me. I would only move massive folders (e.g. Videos, Music - if you have a lot of those files) to the HDD. This is the current state - after 5 months:




PS: But install Win7 first on the SSD and then shrink C - that will make sure the Win7 installer does the proper alignment.

These are the SSDs I have: a Crucial 256gb, Intel 160gb, and a SanDisk 16gb. I'm going to install the Crucial on my personal desktop pc, the Intel on my wife's and i'm not sure what I'm going to do with the little sandisk... make it the OS drive in the nas? main drive for the linux-based firewall? ...???

My capacity concerns are due to frequently installing and uninstalling games and apps, and the files left behind after uninstalling.

why did you partition your 80gb intel ssd?

why did you partition your 80gb intel ssd?

For a variety of reasons:

1. It insulates my data from the OS. Should anything ever happen to my C, my data will be safe.
2. It allows me to image my OS and my data at different schedules (as required) - although right now I take an image of both every morning at boot time.
3. This data partition is shared between my Win7 and my Vista systems. Avoids unnecessary sync steps.

Btw: my Win7 is at about 16.6Gb now. And that after 5 months and a lot of programs installed and uninstalled (no games though). For uninstalling you should use Revo uninstaller. That gets rid of the leftover junk (advanced option). You may only be left with a few .ddls that the program dragged in.