Can installed applications be moved from one HD partition to another?

HenriK37 said:

I recently purchased a refurbished 64 bit Win 7-Pro Optiplex 780 PC that arrived with a number of unexpected pre-installed applications on the hard drive's C:\ partition but with no media included. I would like to keep these applications but want to move them to another hard drive partition.

1) Is such a move possible; and, if so, 2) how do I go about doing such a move without damaging the application files and how do I adjust the OS files to find the application(s) in their new location(s)?

One suggestion already received is to save them to an external storage system and then restore them to the new partition. That seems to me to only deal with half of the problem as I can't understand how the OS will know how to find the new location.

Thanks for advise, comments, suggestions, or pointers to an appropriate tutorial.

To another "hard drive partition" on the same hard drive or to another hard drive entirely???

The applications ONLY and not Windows itself? I'm not sure that's possible.

If you are willing to move Windows also (all of C), 2 methods come to mind: cloning or imaging. Which to use depends on your precise intent.

A clone would be a direct copy to another hard drive.

Imaging would create a copy of sorts (a big file), which would then have to be "restored" to another hard drive or to some partition on your current hard drive.

Either can work or fail.

Cloning is probably simpler, but imaging may have a better chance of success.

Either would copy EVERYTHING on your C partition: Windows, installed applications, uninstalled applications, pot roast recipes, etc. Whatever is there.

Thank you for your response and my apologies for not making my query more precise.

I do NOT want to move the OS presently installed within the C:\partition. I want to move the pre-installed application software (for which no media was provided) to a different partition on a 2nd hard drive internally installed within the same PC.

Why? Over many years, I have found it useful to have only the OS (along with those minor parts of application software that must be installed within one's C:/ partition) installed on one's C:/ partition. It makes backups and recoveries vastly easier when one's C:\ partition gets corrupted or damaged. In addition, the existing HD holding the the C:\ partition doesn't have sufficient capacity for adding both files and needed additional applications.

It seems to me that it would be easier to add a 2nd HD within the same PC for files and applications rather than trying to move the OS to a new, larger, HD. Accordingly, is there some way I move the pre-installed application software as I originally asked?

No, you have to reinstall the programs on the other drive, from C, you don`t have the installers, so you can`t do that.

But, you do not want to do that anyway, the programs should be installed on C for imaging purposes.

The data for those programs can be stored on another drive.

Even something as small as a 120/128 GB SSD is more then enough space for windows and your programs.

3 things you can do to gain space.

1) Turn off or lower the page file if you have 8 GB of ram or more
2) Disable Hibernation
3) Turn off or lower the amount System Restore uses

I don`t recommend doing #3 until you are happy with Windows and are able to create and store a Disk Image.

But I would ask yourself, Do you really need these programs ??