Moving the location of the *users* folders.

[saverio]

Hi,

I was wondering if there was a quick way of relocating a user's directory folder to another drive without having to go into all of the individual folders' location tab in properties?

 

[stevecn70]

Possible: YES, Quick: NO

You can try looking here An error message informs you that you cannot move or rename the Documents and Settings folder

Though it is best to do this on a fresh install of windows before you install anything else.

 

[copernicus]

Tweak 7 will let you do it easily:




Totalidea Software :: Product List :: Tweak Windows Vista - Vista Tweaks - TweakVI - Tweak-VI - Tweak-Vista - TweakVista - TweakXP - Tweak-XP - Tweak XP - TweakUI - Outlook Backup - Outlook Notes - FireTune

 

[SevenSeas]

I want to change this folder only c:\users\My username

Is there a way to change this folder. I can change the subfolder with windows or with tweak 7. But i can't change my userfolder..

 

[zone23]

Hi,

I was wondering if there was a quick way of relocating a user's directory folder to another drive without having to go into all of the individual folders' location tab in properties?

yes there is all you have to do is go into the user folder and just move them to the new location.

For example: I keep user files on my D drive. So I go into c:\users\mike in one explorer window then I have a folder d:\Mike I go to that in another explore window. So know I have two explorer windows open I take and right click and drag the user files from the C window to the D window and click MOVE. This will relocate all of your locations to that folder. So like when you go to start and pictures it will change that to the location you moved the folder to. Thats it...


One note I do find that in some users cases it will break IE favorites. So after I do the move I will test it by seeing if I can add a bookmark in each user if I can't then I just move the favorites back to the original location on the C drive. At that point I will create a copy on the D drive.

 

[zone23]

Possible: YES, Quick: NO

You can try looking here An error message informs you that you cannot move or rename the Documents and Settings folder

Though it is best to do this on a fresh install of windows before you install anything else.

This is weird cause I don't have a documents and settings folder didn't they do away with that in Vista?

 

[zigzag3143]

copernicus

Nice tip on tweak 7. Its beta but who cares.
+1 rep

Ken

 

[zone23]

I personally don't like to use a program for something I can do in about 4 clicks and 20 seconds. To each there own.. at least now you will know how to do it without a program..


BTW zigzag3143 I really like that cat..... man that things getting a work out does it ever stop doing push ups.

 

[dedalus1]

You can simply right click and Move most shell folders. I've never tried moving the entire /Users root like that though, because I'm in a single-user environment and I have /Desktop and /Documents folders on one of my data drives that date back to Windows 2000. It's getting silly at this point in time that Windows doesn't have an option to mount that folder to a separate partition on install. I can tell you from the limited research I did when I was interested in this, that the solutions are not pretty and involve hand-editing several reg keys.

What I just do is set up my user account and drag out the shell folders I'm interested in after install, and merge them with the permanent copies on my data partition. This is functionally the same as editing the target in the folder properties. Windows is actually pretty smart about it. The disadvantage of course is that any new users will default to the /Users hierarchy. In my case the only other account is the built in admin that I only use for escalating privilege, so there is no User data of interest anyway.

I also love how they keep flip-flopping between "My [Shell Folder]" and "[Shell Folder]," I'm guessing some mouth-breathing Vista users were confused as to whether a folder belonged to them or not and complained.

 

[SteveO]

Check this out to move your user folder. I did it after a fresh install this weekend. I think it moved the public too after the first one but the second time I'm not sure.
How to Change User Profile Default Location in Windows 7 | Windows 7 Hacker

It's best to do it after a clean install so anything that is installed will use that location. Everything I installed used it. I didn't change the app data though.

 

[saverio]

well I did it, but it still left a lot of files in the original C-drive location citing that I had not the permission on my admin account to make the operation possible for certain files.

So, failing this I pressed restore location, and unlike my XP where it just moved the whole lot, because of said unmoved folders it got all confused, the long and short of it is that i've now deleted 10 years worth of images

Lesson learnt. I've tried to restore using the backup feature, but it only seemed to want to restore application data, and I deleted my easy transfer file! - you know when you get that knotted feeling in the pit of your stomach

Oh well.... the joys of beta testing!!!

Any chance of a tutorial on the basics of Windows 7 folder structures? I still can't really get my head around the whole libraries and lack of the common shared folder in W7.

 

[zone23]

Well I don't know what to say like I said before really all you should have needed to do was grab all of the files in your user folder and drag them to the new location. Its really just that easy, Vista and 7 automatically update the new folder locations. I've don't this a zillion times on a zillion different PCs. I know it works. The only issue is other users favorites cannot be moved from the user folder. The only trick really is to right click and drag so you have the option to move. I will say this in Vista you always have to do it twice for some reason in 7 I only have to do it once (right click and drag).

Your only option now is to try and right click on the folder and click restore previous versions and see if you can find your files.

 

[MacGyvr]

This article will tell you how to do it:

How to Change User Profile Default Location in Windows 7 | Windows 7 hacker

 

[MacGyvr]

Well I don't know what to say like I said before really all you should have needed to do was grab all of the files in your user folder and drag them to the new location. Its really just that easy, Vista and 7 automatically update the new folder locations. I've don't this a zillion times on a zillion different PCs. I know it works. The only issue is other users favorites cannot be moved from the user folder. The only trick really is to right click and drag so you have the option to move. I will say this in Vista you always have to do it twice for some reason in 7 I only have to do it once (right click and drag).

Your only option now is to try and right click on the folder and click restore previous versions and see if you can find your files.

This is entirely incorrect. Yes, you might be moving files, but the users folder is where user "profiles" reside, and you CANNOT drag and drop them. The article referenced here will tell you how to do it properly:

How to Change User Profile Default Location in Windows 7 | Windows 7 hacker

 

[zone23]

Well I don't know what to say like I said before really all you should have needed to do was grab all of the files in your user folder and drag them to the new location. Its really just that easy, Vista and 7 automatically update the new folder locations. I've don't this a zillion times on a zillion different PCs. I know it works. The only issue is other users favorites cannot be moved from the user folder. The only trick really is to right click and drag so you have the option to move. I will say this in Vista you always have to do it twice for some reason in 7 I only have to do it once (right click and drag).

Your only option now is to try and right click on the folder and click restore previous versions and see if you can find your files.

This is entirely incorrect. Yes, you might be moving files, but the users folder is where user "profiles" reside, and you CANNOT drag and drop them. The article referenced here will tell you how to do it properly:

How to Change User Profile Default Location in Windows 7 | Windows 7 hacker

Thats all fine do what you want I've been doing it my way for years and it works without issue. Maybe you should just try it and see for yourself instead of coming up with some crazy article with a bunch of steps you don't need. I don't know how you can say it doesn't work when I've done it with dozens of machines. Maybe you should try it. YOU CAN TOO.