Windows 7 Move the Users and Program Files Directories To A Different Partition

Duffy — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 16:28:48 +0000

After installing windows 7 you will be greeted with a user creation prompt press shift+f10 and you should get a cmd window up like in the image below

Copy the Users Profiles, Program Files And ProgramData Folders onto the Partition you want to use

robocopy "C:\Users" "D:\Users" /E /COPYALL /XJ
robocopy "C:\Program Files" "D:\Program Files" /E /COPYALL /XJ
robocopy "C:\ProgramData" "D:\ProgramData" /E /COPYALL /XJ

Delete the old folders and create links
For Program Files:
```
rmdir "C:\Program Files" /S /Q
mklink /J "C:\Program Files" "D:\Program Files"
```
For the User Profiles:
```
rmdir "C:\users" /S /Q
mklink /J "C:\users" "D:\users"
```
and lastly ProgramData:
```
rmdir "C:\ProgramData" /S /Q
mklink /J "C:\ProgramData "D:\ProgramData"
```
If you have any permissions issues while deleting C:\ProgramData don't worry about them just try to delete it and make the links again after first reboot
Now open regedit simply by typing regedit on the cmd window
To change the program files path navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion and edit the ProgramFilesDir and CommonFilesDir as needed
For the user profiles you'll need to go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList and again edit the paths as needed
Exit Regedit and the cmd window
Continue to create your user
Reboot your machine and you should be good to go

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Windows 7 Move the Users and Program Files Directories To A Different Partition