win10 Move the user profile to another drive

[jnelsoninjax]

I just installed an SSD and now wish to relocate the user profile to another drive (non-ssd) I have googled this but I keep coming up with creating a xml file to use during installation, but I am beyond that point now. How can I accomplish this?

[Eric Veteran]

That's a really bad idea. It's likely to make updates not install. The ability to locate the user profile folder on another drive is not supported.

I just upgraded to an SSD today, too. I just moved all of the personal folders to a standard hard drive. Music, Movies, Documents and Downloads can all be relocated via Properties>Location.

[+Matthew S. Subscriber²]

You can, but I wouldn't recommend it, it blocked installing updates for me before.

[jnelsoninjax]

That's a really bad idea. It's likely to make updates not install. The ability to locate the user profile folder on another drive is not supported.

I just upgraded to an SSD today, too. I just moved all of the personal folders to a standard hard drive. Music, Movies, Documents and Downloads can all be relocated via Properties>Location.

Thanks for the input, I did find a way to do it, but it really messes things up, so I undid it!

[Danielx64]

There is this: http://www.faronics.com/en-uk/products/data-igloo/ it free, don't need deepfreeze but I don't know if I will break updates though.

[x-byte]

You can do it by changing the ProfilesDirectory path in the registry. But it will remove support for repair installs and maybe major release upgrades ie. Win10->11. I've had no issues with SPs with this solution.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList

ProfilesDirectory = %SystemDrive%\Users

Then you can modify it to i.e. : X:\Users instead (X is you drive label for your other disk). This will make all new users accounts to be stored in that folder.

It works fine. Been using it on hundreds of PC's with no issues. But I would recommend to re-create your current profile with the new path. Not moving it manually. It can get messy.

1. Create a new user on your PC with admin priv.
2. Login with the new user
3. Rename your current user folder on c:\Users\
4. Delete the profile in the registry. Same location as above. A folder where you will find your user path in ProfileImagePath ( something like S-1-5-21-1806219720-3020334788-190002579-500) (Backup the folder if you want to just in case.. export)
5. Re-create your current user
6. Login and then move your files from the old accounts
7. When all is working, delete the account you created to do this process.

PS: This will not keep application settings.

 

[n_K]

You can do this in two ways... One you can mount a hard drive as a folder (check computer management > disk management) therfore mount a mechanical hard drive partition as the users folder.

The other method is to use a hard symlink (yes NTFS supports symlinks) whereby you would symlink C:\users to another drive, and the partition could be used for other things too.

[Danielx64]

If someone went the symlink route, will upgrades be supported/possible?