How to Split windows on two disks

[SneakyD]

I had a major failure on my system and had to do a new install of windows.
My choice of Install is Win7 ult.

I'll skip all the whys and just put the how to split window with out breaking it.

You will need a few free programs to do this.
Macrium Reflect,Easy BCD, and Junction.

My system is comprised of 3 drives,
250 gig (25 gig boot/recovery, 207/8 gig for system)
1 tb for data.
It does not matter what size your drives are as long as you can install windows on to your intended system drive.

You do not need the boot recovery partition either,so skip if you like.
I have Avast rescue disk (ISO),Win Re (WIM),Reflect recovery(ISO), and Hirens (ISO)
and bios extender options and BCD store as well as my clean reflect back ups for system and data.

I'm going to assume your starting fresh.
(It would be Ideal though if you had access to a OS to partition and set up boot drive using easy bcd community edition.)

Install Windows, Install updates.

Turn off page file and delete Hiber.sys (elevated cm enter "powercfg.exe -h off")
its a lot less that has to be imaged later you can turn them on later.

Use disk management to shrink system disk.
Start button--- mmc.exe add snap-in --- disk management. save console as diskman.msc on desktop.

Shrink the system volume to the min size. (what ever your win installation is using, should be around 20 gigs after turning of paging and hibernation) dont worry about the unallocated space.

(this may be a little redundant but better safe then sorry)
elevated cmd prompt run sfc /scannow
defrag
and set chkdisk to run fix file errors
reboot to check disk.

Download Macrium Reflect free, install, image system disk.
Save image to your data drive.
create Macrium rescue image, save to data drive.

Open disk management extend system volume to max size or deduct for a boot partition.

If your doing the boot partition get a copy of easy bcd community edition, bcd deployment, choose your boot drive, install. your boot drive should now be the active partition.

Add your boot entries, (set a windows to your system partition drive letter) macrium rescue as iso entry, what ever else you want to boot accordingly, I would also install the bios extender and you will need something like hirens or a pe disk.
In disk management I assigned the letter "B" to my boot you should also see that its set active.
then after a reboot, I removed the letter to keep windows from using the partition.

So now you should have non visible B, system is C, and data is D.

Reboot start reflect rescue, restore backup image to Data disk.

Reboot start mini xp or similar,ensure System is C and Data is D (disk management)
Delete the folders you want separate from system drive off of system drive.
Delete folders from Data drive that exist on System.
you may have to rename or in min xp bypass security on context.
I have perflogs, program files,program files (x86),programdata,users,recovery on my data disk.

I used the Bat file but you can do it manually on cmd.

cd c
C:\Junction.exe C:\ProgramData D:\ProgramData
C:\Junction.exe "C:\Program Files" "D:\Program Files"
C:\Junction.exe "C:\Program Files (x86)" "D:\Program Files (x86)"
C:\Junction.exe C:\Users D:\Users
C:\Junction.exe C:\Recovery D:\Recovery
C:\Junction.exe C:\PerfLogs D:\PerfLogs

Pay attention to syntax on "Program file folders"

What causes all the headache of moving these folders is you cant copy the link/junctions.
That breaks a lot of stuff, sfc, windows features.
Just moving them causes a cyclic loop.
like appdata/appdata/appdata/appdata

This procedure side steps that by creating everthing where you want it.
Its something the average user can do vs scripting a install script and setting up a custom install. little time consuming but worth it in the end.

Last step would be do the redundant checks, test a few thing and the back up C and D using reflect, both files from my install are right around 14 gigs and fit well on my recovery partition.
then if you need to reinstall your good to go!

Anyone have a way that works but is faster?

 

[essenbe]

It is never a good idea to separate Program Files from the C drive. They are an integral part of the system and need to stay with the C drive. This method will not help recover a system failure, in fact it doubles your chances. If either of the 2 drives has a failure, you still have to do a clean install.

The simple way is to separate your user files from the C drive so you have your data and OS separated. The OS and programs can be replaced, but personal files in many cases cannot. The System drive is the most likely to have a failure due to a bad drive, corruption, virus or any number of reasons. Always make backups of your data and your OS drive on external hard drives that are only connected when making backups. If you back up both OS and Data with Macrium, you can restore it at any time in less than 20 minutes. Back up to multiple external drives in case of a failure with them, just to be safe.

Don't over complicate things. Simple is better and is safer.

 

[mrjimphelps]

+1 for putting your data on a separate drive, and ALL of your Windows stuff on the primary drive.

I would even go one step further than essenbe: I put only the contents of my official Windows Documents folders on the second hard drive; but my Windows user profile stays on the primary drive with the rest of Windows.

Right-click on your Windows Documents folder and choose Properties; then click on the Location tab. You can specify the location of your official Windows Documents folder here: for example, D:\Docs. If you do that, then most Windows programs will default to that location when you want to save a document.

 

[essenbe]

Option 2 User Folders - Change Default Location - Windows 7 Help Forums

 

[Megahertz07]

Use Kari tutorial to move C:\Users to D:\users
Reason NOT to move entire User profile from C to D ? - Windows 7 Help Forums