Moving User Profile

[dankellys]

Any one done it before? Is it safe to do/will it cause loads of problems with individual programs?

The reason I want to move it in the 1st place is because I have an SSD with my OS installed, but it is only a small SSD. My User Profile is also on this drive and is taking up 30gb of space! (particularly the appdata folder). Any advice/tips/tutorials on how to do it would be appreciated.

Edit: Using Win 7 Pro x64

[AETAaAS]

Ooo... if you have been running it for a while, it is a bit of a challenge because shortcuts and other dependencies might have formed, which is why I tend to do it the moment I finish a fresh install.

There are 2 ways I am familiar with, go to C:\Users\[your user name]\. Here you will find all the user files. (Do not move the AppData folder because this can break things)

First way, right click on each folder (one at a time), click Properties. Go to the Location tab. There will be a button to Move the folder. Click that, choose your destination and off it goes.

Second way, right click drag the folders into your new drive and click Move. In my experience, Windows always correctly reassigns the location but some people are squeamish about this method.

Hope that helps.

[BlackDwarf]

I do this for every build of my PC for the same reason as yours. I have a 60Gb SSD that I only want the OS on, and to move my ProgramData and Users folder to save space, so those folders exist as D:\Users etc.

You can't move AppData unfortunately.

Moving the folders on an existing system is difficult and messy, and as such I personally wouldn't advise it.
It's incredibly easy to do during Windows install by using this guide, which has served me well.

Without a reinstall, you could take a look through this guide, but as I said, it can get very messy and involves registry edits.

[kalniel]

Just use junction to map large folders to the mechanical drive and free up space on the SSD.

[TheAnimus]

Just use junction to map large folders to the mechanical drive and free up space on the SSD.

This.

Best advice by far here.

[finlay666]

Just use junction to map large folders to the mechanical drive and free up space on the SSD.

+1 here

[dankellys]

Sorry, never heard of or used junction before. Am I right in assuming it is a piece of software? Anyone got a link to download and a tutorial by any chance? Ok to use this method on an existing system? Can you use it on the appdata folder?

[Splash]

A junction is just a hard link to a directory located in a different location (as opposed to a shortcut) - that location could be another disk, a NAS or wherever you like - this should give you all that you need.

[kalniel]

There are some GUI programs if you don't want to use the commandline. Dirlinker is one I've seen:
http://dirlinker.codeplex.com/

But there are probably even prettier ones around. Just search for windows junction software.

[dankellys]

Cheers for you help. Found this Junction GUI, which looks fairly straightforward: http://www.rekenwonder.com/linkmagic.htm