Windows Vista Tip #4: Move your data folders to a separate drive

Update 24-Feb-2007: There’s an even easier way to accomplish this. Details here:

Vista Hands On #7: Move user data to another drive

If you prefer the manual approach, keep reading…

Windows Vista makes a few fundamental changes in the default folders used to store personal data. For starters, the Documents and Settings folder is gone, replaced by the Users folder, which is located in the root of the system drive (usually C:). Each user account has its own profile folder here, which contains 11 folders, each devoted to a different type of data.

If you have multiple hard drives (or multiple partitions on a single hard drive) you can relocate any of these user folders. The advantage? By separating system files from data, you make it easy to back up and restore each. At least once a month, you can use the backup program in Windows Vista Ultimate Edition to create an image-based backup on DVD or an external hard disk. If something happens to your system drive, you can restore the image, and your data files remain unaffected.

In my experience, the Documents, Music, Pictures, and Videos folders are most likely to contain large amounts of data and will benefit most from relocation. In this case, I assume you have a separate empty drive or partition that uses the letter E:. If your system is configured differently, you’ll need to adjust the instructions accordingly.

Here’s how to relocate the Documents folder:

Open Windows Explorer, navigate to the empty drive that you want to use to store data, and create new folders for each of the existing folders you want to move. If you’re the only user on your computer, you can put them in the root of the drive: E:\Documents, E:\Music, and so on. If you’re planning to use the drive to store data for two or more users, you should create a separate top-level folder for each user and then create subfolders for each type of data: E:\Ed\Documents, etc.
Click Start and click the bold user name at the top of the right column in the Start menu. This opens your profile folder.
Right-click the icon for the Documents folder and choose Properties.

Move_docs_folder_1

On the Location tab, click the Move button.
In the Select a Destination dialog box, double-click Computer, double-click the icon for your data drive (E: in this example), and select the folder you want to use as the new location. Don’t double-click this folder, just click to select it.
Click Select Folder to return to the Location tab, and then click OK. You will see two dialog boxes:

Do you still want to proceed and redirect to <new folder location>? Click Yes.
Would you like to move all of the files in your old location to the new location…? Click Yes. (If you click No, the original folder remains intact and you risk having documents split between the two locations.)

That’s it. You can now repeat the process for Music, Pictures, Videos, and any other data folders you want to use. When you click the Documents shortcut on the Start menu, it takes you to the new location, which appears to be in the same old location. In the Vista namespace, your profile folder always appears under the Desktop, and each link in that folder points to the location you specify. So you can leave some folders (especially those you rarely use) in the original location and just move those that are chock full of data.

34 Thoughts on “Windows Vista Tip #4: Move your data folders to a separate drive”

Serdar on June 13, 2006 at 3:33 pm said:

Wow. I can think of a few people (myself included) that will hail this with open arms.
John S on June 13, 2006 at 4:05 pm said:

Good tip!

But that’s already available in Windows XP.

http://img373.imageshack.us/img373/2649/untitledtruecolor010jr.jpg

John
Ed Bott on June 13, 2006 at 4:17 pm said:

Hey John, I’ve actually published those tips for Windows XP before. See here for the My Documents folder (complete with screenshot) and here for other folders.

The procedures are sufficiently different for Windows Vista that it’s worth publishing the steps separately.
Ryan Walters on June 13, 2006 at 6:33 pm said:

I wish there were a quick and easy way to move the entire Users folder tree to another drive to completely separate the system from user data.
anonymous on June 14, 2006 at 1:49 am said:

Agreed but many BitLocker related articles suggest otherwise (that you store data on your OS partition so it’ll be encrypted by Bitlocker). So, users would have to trade off between encryption or compact image-based backups.
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Ed Bott on June 14, 2006 at 6:41 am said:

Anonymous,

You can use EFS on the data partition and Bitlocker on your system partition. That’s on my list of things to test, but it should work just fine.
modicr on June 22, 2006 at 6:37 am said:

Hello!

I have two disks (C: and D:)
I want to install Vista Beta to folder “C:\WINVISTA\”.
Is it possible to configure Vista setup so
that Users folder is located on “D:\USERS\” and
“Program files” on “D:\PFILES” by default?

Thanks, Roman
Alex Danvy on June 29, 2006 at 12:19 pm said:

Hi,
AFAIK, it’s nearly the same as Windows XP.
But what about the Public folders ?
Actually (in build 5456) we cannot easily change their location. Is there a tip ?
JohnC on September 30, 2006 at 3:58 pm said:

A somewhat belated reply… I have seen a number of different blogs with this issue raised…

Also comments that it would be a good idea for microsoft to include a tool or option for installing or moving the complete user profile, including any local application data – not sure yet how Outlook etc store their data as very new to Vista.

It must be time for MS to deliver something along these lines??
skippy on October 6, 2006 at 11:54 am said:

Thanks for the great info,

i have been trying to work out how to do this for ages!
Ideen on October 15, 2006 at 10:12 am said:

My “documents” folder has disappeared!

While trying to move and then re-store the location of “documents”, I believe I have accidently chosen
“C:\users\ideen” (ideen is the user) as the loction for
documents (as opposed to “C:\users\ideen\documents”).

How can I restore or move to “E:\documents” (where I meant to move it)?

Many thanks! Ideen
Christian on October 23, 2006 at 6:22 am said:

Perhaps try this in the registry:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ Explorer\Shell Folders
Thomas on November 3, 2006 at 4:59 am said:

Too bad this dialog don’t even change the junction point for “My Documents” to the new location …

You have to manually change:
Cd
rd “My Documents”
mklink /d “My Documents” X:\New_Document_Location
Carl on November 3, 2006 at 8:34 am said:

I’ve been looking at this one for a long time. In XP the best way to setup is C: for system D: for Applications and E: for Documents and Settings. The best way to get this is with an answer file during installation.

I’ve found the same with Vista, but putting the Users folder on E: and again we’re back to the answer file during installation. You can us Windows Vista Automated Installation Kit (AIK) on an XP machine to creat an answer file “Autounattend.xml” which can setup almost anything. It can setup the three partitions C:, D: amd E: make C: active and install the OS to C: and put the User Folder onto E:, which means any new users which are created wil go there.

I’ve done this on Vista RC2 and works really well so forget about all that moving cr*p it will drive you made after a while!

Hope that helps Cheer
Toto on November 20, 2006 at 2:21 pm said:

Carl, Which setting do you change to move Users folder to another partition in Image Manager?.. Thanks
Carl on November 22, 2006 at 8:37 am said:

Hi Toto,

In ‘Windows System Image Manager’ use the following componant:

PLATFORM_Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup_VERSION_neutral

and add FolderLocations setting to ‘Pass7 oobeSystem’ in the Answer File.

On the RTM Version of Vista on an AMD64 the componant would look like:

amd64_Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup_6.0.6000.16386_neutral

If you can have a good read though the “Unattended Windows Setup Reference” help file, takes a bit of messing with it for a while.

Cheers
Toto on November 23, 2006 at 10:04 am said:

Hi Carl

but I cant’t get how i specifify drive… i mean I type value of ProfileDirectory as a “D:\Users”?

Thanks again
NO on November 25, 2006 at 5:39 pm said:

Hi there,

wouldn’t it help to move a users profile folder (c:\Users\User1) to another drive and then do an ‘mklink /J’ to the new location?

Cheers
Ealden Escañan on November 26, 2006 at 1:43 am said:

The ProfileList trick still seems to work in Vista.

Basically, go to the Registry, look for ProfileList, and change the location. All user accounts created after the change would be created in the new location. Existing ones need to be moved manually (I recreated mine).