Finally upgrading to WIndows 7, Vista user folder on different drive

GP40X · 11 May 2014

I am upgrading my computer (AMD) with a new motherboard and processor (Intel) and will finally upgrade to Windows 7. I currently have my user folder on a different drive in Vista and do not want to copy it over to a 7 installation on the C drive. Any way I can map my Windows 7 user folder the the Vista Users folder I already have on my data drive?

I will be installing 7 on a WD 6400AAKS hard drive that is currently my swap file drive temporarily until M2 SSD drives come down in price when I will install the OS on the SSD. I currently have two of these drives but never bothered to set up raid 0 (flakey raid controller on my current board) so I will still have the old OS/application drive until I get 7 set up the way I want. Any other suggestions you can think of for this install? I plan on backing up everything on my data drive and all game files to an extra external USB drive first "just in case..."

I also have a Sandisc Ready Cache to give it a speed boost until I get the M2 drive so I will leave the swap file on my C drive this time. TIA

System Specs:
AMD Phenom II X3 720 BE (X4 965 died) soon to be replaced with an i5 4670K
MSI 790FX-GD70 (soon to be replaced with a Z97 chip set MB)
Asus HD 6870 DirectCU
2x 4096kb Patriot DDR-3 1600 memory
2 WD 6400AAKS hard drives
1 Hitachi HDT721010SLA360 1TB hard drive
Corsair HX1000W PSU
Intel EXPI9300PT N.I.C.
Creative X-Fi Titanium sound card
HP dvd1720 optical drive
CoolerMaster CM 690 II Case
Samsung SyncMaster P2370 Monitor
Vista 64 SP2 Not for much longer

gregrocker · 11 May 2014

Yes you can move the Location of each of the new Win7 User folders you need to the old User folder of the same name on its data partition, following User Folders - Change Default Location.

The only drawback is that if you use Win7 backup imaging it will want to include the data partition in the System image since system User files will then be on it. The solution to this is to change to a more flexible imaging program where you can choose to exclude the data partition from the system image, like Macrium - Image your system,

or instead of moving User folder location, you can instead right click each User folder on the data partition to add to its respective Library - Include a Folder - Windows 7 Forums which will leave the C User folder in the library but add the new location too. This way if anything lands in the C User folder you can easily drag it within the library window to the data partition folder. You can also Library - Set Save Folder - Windows 7 Help Forums.

Remember also that these folders while on a different partition always need to be backed up against data loss, by dragging them to external or using a method like Sync, Backup and Store your Files to the Cloud with Skydrive - Windows 7 Forums.

Take extra precaution during the Clean Install Windows 7 to C to not touch the data partition. If it's on another hard drive I would unplug it. If you want to post back a screenshot of Disk Management - Post a Screen Capture Image we can advise you better about which partitions to keep during Win7 clean install.

I would not RAID the HD's as WIn7 doesn't much like RAID and we see nothing but problems with it here without a single positive report.

whs · 11 May 2014

I would recommend the "Include in library" option. Changing the default locations of the standard folders has it's problems at times.