Comments on: How to Move your Windows User Profile to another Drive

By: Jeff

Jeff — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 19:25:00 +0000

Looks like one way to work around this is to change the location tab information for your shell folders before moving your profile to the alternate location.

So, before you begin step 1. you would go to each of your shell folders (Contacts, Desktop, Documents, etc) and go to properties, then location tab. Change the location to the new profile location (i.e. D:\Users\UserName), say Yes to Move the contents. This points Windows, and the search indexer to your new locations when click Documents on the Start menu, or other locations. After you do this, then you can start step 1 above.

By: Hal

Hal — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 04:46:34 +0000

Haha, I find this funyn coz I have the exat samedrive name on my “D” (HAL)

By: Ajith P Francis

Ajith P Francis — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 02:26:54 +0000

Very interesting topic.
Thanks for sharing the ideas.
U guys are really rocking.

By: Steve

Steve — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 16:01:45 +0000

This has been a most useful thread, but even after recreating the junctions not all works. I just completed another reinstall and another attempt to move my user accounts to a second drive. This time I first detailed the attributes of each junction AND the security permissions and owner for each junction. (owner is SYSTEM for all of them).

It’s been only one week, but so far all seems to work. Thanks for your pioneering efforts.

By: Keithius

Keithius — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 23:28:28 +0000

I'm not sure why the search/indexer isn't handling the junction correctly... however, I did find some pointers. The first is this thread from MSDN, and the second is this question from SuperUser.com. Just skimming these articles, it seems like the behavior you're seeing is an inherent, "by design" limitation of Windows Search. But you'll probably want to read both of those articles I just linked to for the full story.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 22:03:23 +0000

Hi, I tried this on Windows 7 Profession x64 (after a fresh reload) and it worked great. I notice now that when I go to My Documents where it is referencing C:\Users\ and search, I am getting no results from the indexed search, but if I manually go to D:\Users\, I get indexed search results. I checked the indexing options and they link to my moved profile is not available on the C: drive to add as an indexed location.

Any advise on how to get indexed results of my docs, pics, etc, when I reference the C: drive of Library locations? Do I need to add the D: locations to my Libraries?

By: Nicole

Nicole — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 18:24:27 +0000

Ok thanks

Well I emailed you about putting everything back to how it was. And also if you could give me info on how to use my external hardrive? for personal files and folders so that windows regonises where they are

By: Keithius

Keithius — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 13:25:12 +0000

If you don’t know what that means, then I would not have tried to do this.

My recommendation to you is to put things back the way they were (as best you can) and not try again – at least until you can understand the conversation that’s been going on in these comments. Otherwise, you’ll just end up in the same situation again.

By: Nicole

Nicole — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 03:31:13 +0000

Why not?

And ive no idea what that means??

By: Keithius

Keithius — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 02:57:40 +0000

I would not use an external (removable) hard drive!

Also, you may have to check the permissions – see previous comments. Easiest way to do this is to compare against a “normal” user profile and make the permissions match.