Does this work in 64 bit systems?

Yes, it does.

Cheers.

I successfully transferred the Users folder to my D Drive in Vista a couple of years ago. I now want to upgrade to Win 7 professional. Will the in-place upgrade option preserve the settings I have in Vista, or over-ride to the default?

Well, because Microsoft doesn't like us to mess around their default file structure, they may not allow you to do a in-place upgrade. Check this post for further information if that does happen to you.

http://www.windows7hacker.com/index.php/2009/08...

Cheers.

I successfully transferred the Users folder to my D Drive in Vista a couple of years ago. I now want to upgrade to Win 7 professional. Will the in-place upgrade option preserve the settings I have in Vista, or over-ride to the default?

Isn't this a better approach?

http://tuts4tech.net/2009/08/05/windows-7-move-...

Thanks for the sharing.

It's interesting using the mklink to make a link conjunction to move both program file and user profile. It's a little bit more complicated but is definitely worth trying. It may be easier moving an existing user profile.

Cheers.

Also, the important point is that it works around the problem that changing program files location in the registry, causes problem with updates and some programs.

Thank you so much! I just installed windows 7 on a clean hard drive and followed your simple steps. Now my disk allocations are so much more efficient, organized, and easy to work with. Going into the future, there is nothing like doing it right the first time. Kudos!

I have a new Windows 7 system and there is no possibility this will work. Even though I boot up in a different account, when I try to copy the account I want copied from within the User Profiles window, the Copy To button is disabled. Copy it manually is not all possible. There are access denied/permission errors from half the folders and I'm doing that from this account. xcopy also gives the same complaints. Even if I were somehow overcome the permissions bug (it certainly looks like a bug), I can't see how I could copy the registry hives. Even a working Windows doesn't let you copy that.

I've created a new administrator account and it has the same problem.

note that this trick works the best before creating a new user. It would take a lot more steps to move an existing user profile to the different drive.

Cheers.

Okay, where are the steps for that?

the step is up in the post, we've mentioned this in the post as well

Cheers,

Thanks for your help on this. I checked out that post but I wasn't able to use the information there to fix my problem. I did not see any keys with a .bak (though I admit I am not sure I understood exactly what it was saying to do).

However, even if that post were relevant to my situation, it begs the question... Why after making the registry changes suggested in this post would any new accounts created be corrupted to the point that I have to go update the registry again?

Just to be sure I am clear about what is happening... If I make the suggested registry changes in this post and then create a new user, I am unable to log in to that new user account (I can stll log in to accounts created before I made the changes). When I change the registry back to the default values, I am once again able to create new users and log in fine (of course -- the user profile is on C:).

One more thing that you should check is the permission in Users folder you created in the different partition. If the permission is limited, you wouldn't be able to create the right profile under it.

Cheers.

I just tried this fix on Windows 7 Professional 64 Bit and it did not work. I changed the registry entries as descrobed above (and checked / rechecked to be sure I did it correctly). I then created a new user, but when I tried to log in as this new user, the login failed with the following error: "The User Profile Service service failed the logon. User profile cannot be loaded."

Anybody have any suggestions or thoughts?

This seems to relate on a different issue. Please refer the following post and see if it helps.

http://www.vistax64.com/vista-general/43191-use...

Please post back if it at all fixes your problem.

Cheers.

Darren,

You probably figured this out by now - but if you accidentally change "ProgramData" as well, then you'll have hangup you observed saw. I just did the same thing. In addition, all the applications in the start menu went missing. And you didn't see any pics available when you created the user.

All fixed now. But I created my new user with that mistake - going to kill and recreate the user anew just in case!

Thanks for the tip.
Additionally I'd recommend using "xcopy source /k/r/e/i/s/c/h" to do the copies instead of using the windows GUI. The /o option also copies NTFS-rights from one partition to another. A copy from the GUI won't do this. Without that you can run into troubles; i.e. a normal user would be able to delete links from the all users/public desktop allthough that should'nt be allowed.

even better: use Total Commander -> more easy. still doesn't copy file-attributes

is this safe with junction folders?

Not exactly show what you are trying to do with the junction folders. Could you please be more specific?

Cheers.

When I use this method, I get an error when I set up a new user and then try to log into that new user. It says that it cannot access the new user's profile location, that it might be on another network etc. and instead of getting a "normal" desktop, it is black. I look in the users directory and there is no folder created for the new user. I even tried resetting the permissions on the new users folder ('e:\users') to match those for the c:\users folder (and subfolders), but this didn't help either.

This did work for me on W7 RC2, but I am trying this on W7 RTM, and it isn't working. Any thoughts?

I just did the same on W7 official release, and it works fine. No error due to the permission issue.

Permission issue does happen when trying to move an existing profile to different location but shouldn't on a new created user profile. That does sound a bit weird.

If you came up any solution, please do post back as it may help others with the same issue.

Cheers.

Hi, thanks for the reply. I changed back the registry entry after I started geting the issue so I don't think that caused it. You are right it is an odd issue and I am sure 95% of programs will work with this setup, I just happen to have come across some that don't. And I cannot for the life of me understand why as you are right windows is creating the user profile directory and permissions, so why does it matter between having it on c: or d:.

Just to double check I used the procedure again to get windows to create another account on the d: drive and another on the c: drive, again both admin accounts rather than a stardard user. And again the accounts on c: run the offending programs without needing elevated access. Where as the accounts on d: gove error messages. I have checked the permissions side by side for the directories on c: and d: and see no differences. It's odd.

Don't know if anyone is having the same problems woth that same programs especially speedfan, as that would confirm if it is an issue or just my set-up. Anyway I will use an account on c: for now as I don't need the extra hassle and the extra variable when troubleshooting when other stuff does not work....

Shame, really wanted to get the appdata dir off my ssd.

Wanted to do this just to have my user profile and more importantly the appdata directory on my mechanical 1.5tb drive rather than my small ssd drive. After installing win 7, changed just the 'profilesdirectory' setting from the default to d:\users. Created a new account. Logged into it and then changed the registry setting back to default. Then started to install programs.

Then ran into an issue that I did not have before when running the with my user profile on the c: drive in win 7. That is that some programs that worked, now complain that they cannot write to the HDD. The two main offenders so far being speedfan and COD MW2. Speedfan gives errors after it's detection run, saying it cannot write to various files. COD says 'Modern warefare 2could not write a file. The hard drive is probably full'. But if I run them both as administrator or change the permissions of their directories in Program Files (x86) to allow users write access no more error messages.

Also to test further I created another account using the default registry settings, so put's the account in the c:\users dir. When I log into this account I no longer have to mess around with running as admin or changing permissions to get these to programs to work. They work in the default non admin, user mode. Am not desperate to install any more programs while this issue exists.

Any idea's?

One thing I noticed from your testing is that you changed the registry setting back to default. I didn't do that on my Windows 7. Maybe that's problem?

The permission issue sounds odd to me because changing the profile registry settings is just simply telling the system where my profile should be saving and that is nothing to do with the permission stuff.

Cheers.

Hi

thanx for this nice information. I have one concern, can I have the profiles in D drive where D is protected by bitlock encryption?

Regards,
Ageel

I think that is totally fine, as long as you are not running native boot VHD.

Cheers.

my favorite windows perfectxp http://www.perfectxp.com/

I dont think ur instructions are very clear after all, am I supposed to create a new folder in the new directory called User, and then copy the Default folder and Public Folders to it?

Or am I to copy the User folder on the C: drive to the new location on the other drive?

Please let me know. Thanks

Yes, create a new folder called Users in the new driver, and copy default and public folder from C: to it. Directly copying the user folder may cause some registry changing without you noticing it.

Actually, if you are ok with leaving these two folders at their original location, that's fine too, you can skip step 1 and 2, right jump to step 3.

Hope that answers your question.

Cheers.

Great tips here guys! I could also use some help. I purchased a 32G SSD which I am going to install Windows 7/64 on. Currently, I do have Win 7/64 installed (along with my profiles and apps) on drive C (325G). Drive D (500G) holds games and drive E (1TB), movies. What I want to do is just have the essential Windows files on the SSD and keep everything else the same. Now, I understand how to move the new OS install profile files but how do I "get rid of" the original OS install? Also, how do I know WHICH files I need to keep on the 32G OS SDD and which ones to move to my (will be now) D drive to maximize performance and space? I think you understand what I am asking here? Thanks!

Hi,

great post and thanks for it. Done it a while back for someone on Vista to leave him with an image so he could restore his PC to the state I handed it to him and his data would be kept on a different partition.

Followed the instructions as shown by you, just that when i copied the folders from C: to D: I ran the Explorer as Admin.

Now I'm asking myself how I could delete that C:\Users folder, after I have created a new Admin account with which I intend to work and having deleted that, let me call it admin-account-created-by-windows-during-installation as I see no need for it any more?

When I try to do so, I'm getting an error message regarding the libraries, those meta-folders. When i double click the admin-account-created-by-windows-during-installation user folder it's empty, still showing a lock on it though.

It tried to become the owner with the according right to do so, not sure what I did there and if it worked but still can't delete it - still that library error message - won't let me remove the whole folder.

The same happening with C:\Users\Public - can't seem to remove that one either.

Any idea what i need to do? I find those user rights dialogs with user groups pretty confusing.

Thanks for your help :)

I don't think copying profiles from one drive to another would move everything over ideally. It may still leave things behind in the original folder. I would suggest leaving these folders as they are. Hope they don't bother you too much. At least, they haven't bothered me.

Cheers.

Thanks for laying this out step-by-step. I'm going to migrate all user profiles to a separate partition and hope to avoid needless confusion, errors, and lost time. I've poked around a bit and found a few different tutorials. I have two questions for you:

First, did you have any problems with applications that reference the original path for user profile?

Second, I stumbled upon what appears to be a Windows 7 option for this exact operation, but was curious whether anyone else had tried this (and if so with what results).
- Open Computer Management>System Tools>Local Users and Groups>Users>
- Double-click on the user you wish to modify
- Select the Tab "Profile" and provide paths for profile and home folder.

Here are my opinions regarding your two questions.

First, most of the applications use system environment variable as the folder path, i.e. %userprofile%. Only those poor coded will use hard coded path inside their application. So I wouldn't worry about that. Frankly, I haven't run into any problem because of that.

Second, that's a good point that uses profile settings in local users and groups. It was designed for profile roaming originally. Since I am not a fan of roaming, I didn't pay lot of attention on it. You might get the same result by setting up a different user profile in each user account. However, I don't thing Home folder will get you what you want in this case.

Cheers.

emeğe saygı millet

If I currently have the users profiles on the default (c:\users\***) and I do a Migration Wizard backup of c:\users\XYZUser and then do as you state above - a clean install, copy the default and public profiles to d:\users etc create a new account with the same name as originally (eg, XYZUser) and then resotre the migration wizard willl all the old info be restored to the new XYZUser location on D;\users???

Yes, that WILL work. I have tested it. On my computer, I had already been running "most" of my profile on a separate partition. (ie: Contacts, Desktop, Downloads, My Documents, My Music, etc...) However, I really wanted my ENTIRE profile, including AppData and all those weird links, on the separate partition. I had not been 100% successful in manually moving AppData and all those weird links in the past. I then discovered this tutorial, but didn't really want to go through customizing everything all over again.
- So per your idea, I used the Migration Wizard to back up my profile. I then enabled the Administrator account and logged into it. (Yes, that ended up creating the Admin profile in the Windows 7 partition, but I didn't care.)
- Then I deleted my profile, including all its files. (I previously backed up the entire drive to an external drive just in case I hosed everything.)
- I followed this tutorial perfectly, but I had some issues with it. From the Administrator account, I added a user (trying to recreate my profile). However, I could not successfully log into the new user. I kept getting an error about "The User Profile Service service failed the logon. User profile cannot be loaded." or something.
- Okay, fine. Let's simplify the hell out of this. I went back to the Admin account and deleted the new user account I created earlier, including files. (Not that there were any files yet, as the profile folder for the new user had never even been created in either the old or new location. Makes sense being that it never could log on.)
- Next, I changed the registry keys back to their defaults... except for one. I left the ProfileDirectory key changed to point to the other partition.
- Rebooted, and logged back into the Admin account. Added the new user account. Logged out of Admin and into the new user account. All good. EVERTHING for the new profile was just where I wanted it on the other partition.
- Double clicked the huge backup file that Migration Wizard created for me way earlier. I was worried that it would try to restore everything back to their exact original locations (that would be bad) which included some things on the C: drive (AppData and whatnot) and the rest to the D: drive (Desktop, Downloads, My Documents, etc...) It did not. Migration Wizard put everything where it should be IN THE NEW PROFILE LOCATION. It took into account that everything from the old profile should now be placed in the new profile location. Awesome! Custom settings transferred too. I think the only thing I had to fix was what default programs I wanted certain file types to open with. No big deal.
- NOTE: My old profile name and my new profile name was identical. However, Migration Wizard allows you to restore to a different profile name if you want. I think it was under some advanced button or something during the restore.
Hmm, this ended up being much longer than I intended. Anyway, hope all that answer the question and helps someone.

BTW, I used "Windows Easy Transfer" built in to Windows 7 to backup the profile data. I just realized I kept incorrectly referring to it as the Migration Wizard... just to avoid confusing anyone.

Thanks Chris for sharing the info and helping answer the question in very detail. Much appreciated. This is longest comment in this site.

Cheers.

As far as I know, yes, it will work. However, please definitely leave the comment here if you make it work.

Cheers.

The following worked for me. Your procedure did not work without my step 2.

Assume current profile is in C:\Users\Student and you want to move it to D:\Users\Student
Using registry:
http://www.windows7hacker.com/index.php/2009/05...
1. Using windows explorer (with "view hidden files") copy all files from C:\Users\Student to D:\Users\Student
or if it is new, just leave d:\Users\Student empty

2. Click "start" button, type regedit. In:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList\
right-click ProfilesDirectory and select "Modify". Change %SystemDrive%\Users to D:\Users

3. Choose subfolder(s) of ProfileList having "Student" in ProfileImagePath.
(e.g. in my case it is
S-1-5-21-1432653313-2508134619-3354344128-1000
S-1-5-21-1432653313-2508134619-3354344128-1003.bak
S-1-5-21-1432653313-2508134619-3354344128-1007)

Right-click ProfileImagePath, select Modify. change to D:\Users\Student

Hi people

I have done the steps explained above. All works ok apart from various little problems that I have notice every now and then. For example, if I go to Devices and Printers, the page stays blank and seems to continue to load forever. My programs also have a tendancy to become more unstable and crash more often.

Have anyone else noticed things like these ?

Hi Darren, I have used this tip quite extensively on both my Vista and Windows 7 machines, no problem whatsoever. It's actually more complicated on my Windows 7 machine because my windows 7 is on a native VHD that connects my user profiles on my Vista. And again, it runs so smooth that I never had encountered even one issue that could be related to the profile settings.

The issue you explained in your comment seems to me that it may something to do with your device driver. Maybe try to update it to the latest version and see if it helps.

@Duncan, thanks. It's true that considering the price and size of SSD having 2 of them in the middle-high laptop should be standard. And I believe that Windows 8 will make the change to reflect the trend.

"I often find it seems quite dumb putting user profiles in the same partition as the system"

While I agree with this statment and the same thing strikes me for the recovery partition on almost all OEM laptops and systems these days, When the primary HDD goes all of it becomes useless.

I pray for the day Laptops come with 2 SSD's and an OS smart enough to actively split applications, user data, OS data and recovery data across both HDD's so should primary HDD go down the user data and recovery data is still avaliable on the second HDD, also moving the User data and applications to a seperate HDD from the OS would speed up booting, application load times and user data access times.

With the costs coming down and the size of SSD's also coming down I look forward to laptosp with Multiple SSD's.

I agree with the statement, but under the current climate I can understand why the OS makers make it standard across the board to pput everything on one disk, considering most of the time the system only ever has one disk. The ability to see a second disk under setup and prompt the question would be nice, maybe in windows 8 :P

nice tip, I've always dislike the idea of having user documents on the main partition, make it also running out space so quick

ps. i think we have some problem with the comments I can't see what I am typing here need to highlight it to see what 'am writing