User Profile - Change Default Location

That's a beautiful note about moving USERs to another drive will now have THAT drive included in a system image. I'd never have thought of that.

Hello Brink,


I followed your tutorial to move the User Profile to my large HDD from my 120GB SSD C: drive and it worked perfectly. Actually it worked better than expected. But I do have some suggestions to eliminate a few small hickups that I had and I wanted to share the results of my test on making a system image backup after moving the User Folder.

Thanks for creating such a good website for learning the details of Windows 7. I have been holding out for over a year to convert from XP. I don't think I could have gotten my system to work the way I wanted without all the tutorials on this site.


I did not understand why you had the warning that the new User Location on the HDD would become part of a
system image of the boot drive. An image is normally a bit-by-bit copy of the drive. It does not care what data is on it. A file level backup would include the relocated files but not an image. To test this, I made a system image using EaseUS Todo Backup 3.5 on the system as Windows installed itself on a clean C: SSD. I then moved the User Profile loaction to my 2 TB HDD. Followed by copying all my previous data (~300 GB) from another HDD to the new "allencar" locations on the 2 TB drive. I then made a second system image of C: Drive. It was approximately the same size (~27GB in the backup folder) as the original image. So my test shows that the moved User Profile does not affect the ability to make a system image for backup purposes.

I also suggest that the move of the User Profile be done BEFORE any of the system utilities from the motherboard, graphics, or other equipment manufacturers are installed. Originally I installed everything first; then moved the User Profile. I got a warning that some of the programs would not work correctly because of the move. So I reformated the SSD and started over; performing the User Profile move just after Windows 7 install completed and before any of the equipment specific drivers were installed. Everything worked perfect this time. I started over with formating the SSD because I like having a system without any errors during the initial install.

The final hickup I had was in adding new Favorites in IE; which were moved with the profile to the allencar location on the HDD. Before I could add a new Favorite in IE; I had to go to Properties of the Favorites folder and share it with Everybody. Since then everything has workd great.

Thanks for all the work you and your partners at this website have done to make things easier for others.

Allen

Hello Brink,

Thanks for explaining that the Windows 7 system image is not a true disk image. I feel better now bacause your warning caused me a lot of concern.

I don't understand why MS has not already incorporated this option into the installation process. My installation with a fast drive for the operating system/application programs and a 2nd large data drive has been common even when using HDDs. I have done it for years and it has saved me a lot of grief because the data is located on another drive and not on the operating system drive which can get corrupted. MS could make the installation completely clean if it would detect the small and large drives; and then ask if where the data show be located.

Thanks again.

Allen

This didn't work with me on Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit (current Windows updates to 2011-12-22).

I should have written down the exact error message, but like a fool I didn't. It was about a conflict with local policies.

Step 14 a of Option 1 Method 1, moving an existing userid. So everything goes fine up to trying to long on with the user whose files I moved.

I feel bad, I should have at least gotten the exact text of the error message.

It is a bit busy around here this week, but after Christmas I'll get some screen shots.

I appreciate the time you put in on these tutorials Brink, these are some of the best.