User Profiles - Create and Move During Windows 7 Installation

Moving Windows and Program Files folders is not recommend by Microsoft. However, moving both Users and ProgramData folders is safe and can save a lot of space on system disk. Pictures, mp3’s videos, documents and so on, a user folder with its subfolders can be tens, sometimes hundreds of gigabytes.

I don't think it would be a good idea.

IML8 said:

Would it be possible to include both the Program Files folder and the Program Files (x86) folder in the XML or would that break something for Windows.

It is a difficult task which includes quite a lot tinkering with junctions and symbolic links. I have played with it enough to understand to totally forget the idea.

Due to it's complexity and numerous ways it can go wrong I have not included this procedure in my tutorial, and I will not in any circumstances offer support or advice on this subject. Call me chicken if you want to but I do not want to spend my evenings answering all those "Oh s*** it totally messed my Windows!" posts.

To give you an idea how to start if you want to research the issue by yourself, type mklink /? on command prompt to get started with linking folders. These articles might help, too:

• Using Symlinks in Windows Vista - How-To Geek
• Create Symbolic Links, Hard Links and Directory Junctions in Vista with MKLINK « My Digital Life
• NTFS symbolic link - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

There are some third party applications to move installed apps from system drive to another drive. See this article about one of these: SSD Boost Manager Seamlessly Moves Files and Programs Between Hard Drives

My solution is to manually edit installation path when installing new apps. Honestly, how often do you need install something? It takes a few seconds to click Browse button on setup dialog of a program to change the installation path.

Just for information, this gets even trickier on Windows 8 as Win 8 Store Apps and Store itself refuse to co-operate if ProgramData is relocated so my recommendation is to only relocate Users on Win 8.

Kari

In my opinion that is a wise decision, Nick.

BTW, here's a mind game to play: Try to guess how much HD space your Program Files (and Program Files (x86) in 64-bit Windows) folder takes. When you have a figure in your mind, right click the Program Files folder icon, select properties and check.

I bet you will get surprised: It's quite small, in fact quite often a lot smaller than users assume.

Kari

:)

Apps and programs are normally much smaller than we users think. Folders and files stored in Program Files only store the app itself, the static part of it.

Dynamically changing parts like user preferences, settings and so on you have already moved: user specific files to NEW_DRIVE:\Users\Your_Username\AppData\***\App_Name (hidden folder, *** here one of AppData's subfolders Local, LocalLow or Roaming) and those for all users to NEW_DRIVE:\ProgramData\App_Name (also a hidden folder).

It is common that an application's combined ProgramData and AppData takes more space than app folder itself in Program Files.

All this just to explain a bit more why I think that moving Program Files really is unnecessary.

Kari

Yes, when you run sysprep the install media (install.wim) must be available.

Boot to Audit Mode, edit answer file as needed checking / modifying the bit architecture, new folder locations, path to install.wim and Windows version. Run sysprep.

That's it.

Kari