What’s the Best Way to Move C:\users to D:\users Under Vista and Windows 7

andrew8062 7:44 pm on December 9, 2009 | Answers: 1    
Tags: vista (12), win (20), windows (150)

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• andrew8062 7:44 pm on December 9, 2009
  

  You can move the entire C:\Users folder to a different drive pretty easily after windows is installed:

  Boot to the installation media, and get to the command prompt (I believe you need to click repair first)
  Use Robocopy to copy C:\Users to D:\Users: robocopy c:\Users d:\Users /mir /xj
  a. /mir tells robocopy to mirror the directories, this will copy all files and permissions
  b. /xj is very important, this tells robocopy not to follow junction points. If you forget this, you will have a lot of trouble.
  Verify that the files successfully copied
  Delete c:\Users
  Create junction that points to d:\Users: mklink c:\Users d:\Users /j
  That’s it. I’ve been using this process since Vista went RTM with not problems.

  Here is an article that explains it as well. Just use robocopy instead of xcopy as he does in the article to avoid possible ntfs permissions problems.

  Update: Because I found out the hard way, I thought I’d also mention that if you are planning on moving “Program Data”, or “Program Files” with this method, you will be disapointed to find out that everything works as expected, but windows updates will no longer install. I’m not sure if this has been fixed Win 7.