In the operating room Windows system(in all its versions) there is a so-called user folder, which contains folders for storing the desktop, videos, documents, for downloading files from the Internet, for music, images, and others that are used less frequently. Since the folders are initially located on the system drive “C”, over time this drive may become full. And if you bought yourself a small SSD drive, then most likely there will not be enough space for the files stored in the user’s folders. In this case, the location of these folders must be moved to another local disk, for example, “D” and I will talk about this in this article.

Now in more detail... These user folders are primarily created for the convenience of the user, because they allow you to conveniently sort your information on the computer through the explorer, for example, put videos, films, etc. in the “Video” folder, photos, pictures - in the “Images” folder, Well, what you place on the desktop is automatically placed in the “Desktop” folder. Moreover, the appearance of these folders is initially optimized in the system for certain data, videos, photos, music. And you don’t need to create your own folders for everything you have on your computer. In general, whether to use them or not is everyone’s business.

If these folders are actively used for their intended purpose, the information in them will fill up a lot of disk space. As an example, my entire user folder takes up more than 600 GB. What's wrong with that, you ask? Nothing bad, actually, but the problem will arise when there is not enough space on your system disk. At the same time, increase or decrease the size system disk- this is a dangerous operation in which you can break Windows itself, i.e. it will stop starting.

You can read information about resizing local disks

And some users store most of their information on the desktop, which, accordingly, will also take up space on the C: drive.

It may be news to some that the desktop in Windows is also a folder. Yes, that is right. The folder is called “Desktop” (or Desktop) and it is located in the folder of the system user you are working under, on drive C:

Or another option. Now many people put it under their system SSD drives, instead of the usual hard drives. And these SSDs are very expensive, that is, they cost much more than HDDs (hard drives), 2 or even 3 times more expensive. Because they work many times faster and Windows generally works much faster with them. Since these disks are expensive, they are usually purchased in such a capacity that they are only enough to install Windows and programs for it. This is approximately 120 GB, a size that is enough for most for these purposes. But these 120 GB are no longer enough to store all the information on the computer, especially in the user’s folders, since it is initially located on the same local drive as Windows.

Here, above, I gave 2 examples due to which you may need to change the location of the user folders, especially the Desktop folder and both of these examples are related to the lack of free space on drive "C".

Let's move on to practice...

How to transfer user folders to another local drive.

The user folder itself is standardly located at the following path in Windows: C:\Users\Vladimir

Instead of “Vladimir” you will have the name of your Windows account.

Sometimes the "Users" folder may be called "Users".

In your user folder you will see something like this:

All of the user's folders are displayed here, such as "Desktop", "Documents", "Downloads", etc. There may also be other folders here, for example, as in the image above, which are not circled in red. Such folders can be created by some programs, i.e. this is normal.

In some cases, folders may be named in English:

• Downloads = Downloads
• Desktop = Desktop
• Favorites = Favorites
• Pictures = Pictures
• Contacts = Contacts
• Videos = My videos (in new Windows versions called "Video")
• Documents = My Documents (called “Documents” in newer versions of Windows)
• Music = My Music (called “Music” in newer versions of Windows)
• Searches = Searches
• Saved Games = Saved games
• Link = Links

To change the folder location, you need to click on the desired folder right-click (hereinafter referred to as “RMB”), select “Properties”. Go to the “Location” tab (1) and click “Move” (2).

Will open Windows Explorer, where you need to select the folder to which the current one will be moved. It is better to create a new one for the target folder (to which you are transferring the current one) with the same name, but on a different local drive.

Example. Move the “Downloads” folder from the old location to the new one. The old location in the example is: C:\Users\Vladimir We create a folder with the same name “Downloads” on the 2nd local drive. Accordingly, when moving the old folder, in the “Location” tab we select the new “Downloads” folder that we created.

After selecting a new location, click “Apply” in the window.

If you have any files in your Downloads folder, the system will offer to move them all to the new location that you have chosen. Better files move. To do this, click “Yes” in the window.

We do the same with all other folders that are in your user’s folder. That is, we first create a folder with the same name in another local drive, then transfer the old folder to it.

Of course, you may not directly transfer all the folders, but it’s better to do it anyway so that you definitely don’t have anything taking up extra space on the “C” drive. And for those who like to store a lot of files directly on the desktop (I do this myself sometimes), I strongly recommend moving the “Desktop” folder! :)

But I think it’s very useful, so I’m posting it corrected and expanded copy.

The task of moving the user profile folder from the system drive to another logical or physical drive in the OS Windows family is very important for a number of reasons:

• The need to separate operational information (system) and archival data (user data) due, for example, to the need for storage system files on a high-speed but less reliable RAID0 disk array.
• There is no need for additional information transfer when reinstalling the OS.
• Compared to transferring an individual user profile, transferring the Users folder is more preferable, since the profiles of all subsequent users of the computer will also be saved in the right place, and there will be no need to go through the transfer procedure again.

One of the most elegant and efficient methods for carrying out such a transfer is the ability to determine the location of the user profiles folder during the system installation stage. Microsoft provides us with this opportunity for Windows 7 under the name Audit Mode. You can read more about this mode in the next article.

Now about the actual scenario for transferring the Users folder:

1. You should perform a normal installation of Windows 7 in any way convenient for you, stopping at the step where the installer program will ask you to enter the computer name and user name.
2. On the screen for entering your computer name and username, press the combination CTRL keys+ SHIFT + F3. The computer will restart and boot into Audit Mode. In this case, the system will be in this mode until you run the sysprep utility with the /oobe switch or select the appropriate item in the windowed version of this utility, which starts in Audit Mode every time the system starts.

   

3. Since at this point you will already have Windows 7 installed, but not fully configured, before assigning a new location for the user profiles folder, you must first prepare the disk subsystem, that is, create and format the partition that you plan to use to house the Users folder .
4. Now you need to create configuration file to configure the location of the Users folder, here are its contents:

   x86 version (download):
   D:\Users D:\ProgramData
   Version for x64 (download):
   D:\Users D:\ProgramData
   Save it under any name, for example unattend.xml.

   Attention! The file must be saved in UTF-8 encoding (and for those who understand UTF8 + BOM).

   

5. The window with the title "System Preparation Program 3.14" must be closed. Otherwise, when you run the following command, you will receive the error: “Another copy of this application is already running.”

   It is better to save the "unattend.xml" file on your hard drive rather than on a flash drive, because when using this file, the next time you reboot, the flash drive will not yet be connected and the system will report an error and will constantly reboot. The entire installation process will have to start over. Assuming that the unattend.xml file has been saved in the root of the C drive, then the command to apply it will be as follows:

   C:\Windows\System32\sysprep\sysprep.exe /oobe /reboot /unattend:C:\unattend.xml
   

   

   
   The computer will restart.

   If the file is NOT saved in UTF-8 encoding (as described above), you will receive the following error: “A fatal error occurred while running the Sysprep program on the computer.”

   

6. Returning to the window for setting the computer name and user name, complete the installation.
7. After booting the computer, make sure that the D:\Users and D:\ProgramData folders exist and that the folder of the user whose name you specified at the final installation stage is in D:\Users.

   

As a bonus, you can also take advantage of the so-called junction points to prevent errors associated with explicitly specifying the previous paths of user profile folders. To do this, create two symbolic links using the mklink utility (run with administrator rights):

Mklink /J C:\Users D:\Users mklink /J C:\ProgramData D:\ProgramData
Thus, now, even when accessing the same paths, any program will not notice the substitution and will work with folders on drive C, although in fact they will be located in the location you configured.

To make some applications compatible with Windows XP, I recommend making the following symbolic link:
mklink /J "C:\Documents and Settings" D:\Users
If the users folder already existed and you initial setup operating system If you set the same username, another profile folder will be created, and the old one will remain untouched. All files from the old folder should be transferred to the new one manually (it is advisable to boot under a completely different user so that files in the profile folder are not blocked).

Therefore I recommend after Windows installations and after creating user profiles (to do this you need to log in interactively once for each user), create a system image on the C: drive. In the event of a failure, you deploy the system from an image in which user profiles are linked to their folders, and the problem described in the paragraph above will not occur.

Transferring user profile folders from a system drive to another drive is needed to free up a relatively small system drive (for example, an SSD).
The operation is unsafe and controversial - anyone who doesn’t know how and why should not do it.

Additional will be required. xxcopy utility. Pro version required. Although it is paid, its official trial period of 60 days is quite sufficient for our task.
So:

1. Install xxcopy.
2. We create a new temporary user with a name, for example, “TU”, which will be used to perform the data transfer operation and give him administrator rights.
3. We reboot (to remove locks on used files) and log in under the new user (“TU”).
4. Let's launch command line Windows in administrator mode. To copy a folder from drive C: to drive D:, run the command:
   xxcopy c:\Users d:\Users /E /H /K /SC /oE1
   If your drive letters are different, substitute yours. As a result, the folder will be copied properly. You don’t have to pay much attention to errors, if there are any.
5. Next we run the command regedit.In it we find the registry branch HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList.In this branch we change the values ​​of the keys:
   • Default to "D:\Users\Default"
   • ProfilesDirectory to "D:\Users"
   • Public to "D:\Users\Public"
6. In the same branch there are branches with the parameters of the profiles of users already registered in the system (the branches with long names are what they are) - for each user you need to change the value of the key " ProfileImagePath» to a directory on the portable disk.
7. The temporary user is no longer needed - everything that was required of him has been completed. At the same time, nothing irreversible has been done so far - all the data was actually copied and not transferred. Therefore, in the case of “something went wrong...” you can always return the status quo. Now we reboot again and log in under a real administrator account.
8. We make sure that the login occurs correctly and the system boots without any questions. Now you can proceed to further steps.
9. Run the command line again Windows string in administrator mode and execute the commands:
   • rd "C:\Documents and Settings"- removing the symbolic link to the old Users folder
   • rd "C:\Users" /S- deleting the oldest Users folder
   • mklink /D "C:\Documents and Settings" "D:\Users"
   • mklink /D "C:\Users" "D:\Users"

Now on your system the user profile folder Users is located at the desired disk and, in addition, there are symbolic links to the new folder, which protect the system from incorrect access to the old address.

For some reason, Microsoft has abandoned the ability to transfer profiles for client versions of its operating systems, starting with Windows Vista. I don’t know what this is connected with, but when you go to the “User Profiles” menu, you will see that the profile copy button is disabled.

But like many other restrictions imposed by Microsoft, this too can be circumvented, do everything according to the instructions and you will succeed ;)

This article is suitable for Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1. So, in order:

1) Log in under your administrator account.

2) Create a new folder to store your accounts; in my case it will look like this:

3) Next, you need to create a new user with administrator rights. To do this, go to “Control Panel” → “User Accounts” → “Adding and Removing User Accounts” → “Creating account" Enter any name, select “Administrator” and click “Create an account”:

4. Reboot the computer and log in as our new user:

5. Copy the folder with the profile of our main account. To do this, go to the path: C:\Users and copy the folder with the required user name to our new folder.

6. Next, go to the properties of both folders and go to the “Security” tab. Here we need to create in the folder on drive D all the same user groups as in the folder on drive C, and also give them the same access rights.

As you can see, you need to delete the “Authenticated” and “Users” groups, you also need to add the site user and the “HomeUsers” group.

In order to add or remove a user or group, you must click the “Edit” button. In the window that opens, select a user or group and click the “Delete” button or simply click the “Add” button to add a new group.

A window for selecting users and groups will open:

Click the “Advanced” button and in the new window on the right, the “Search” button:

Choose the desired group and click OK until only the “Group Permissions” window remains.

As a result, you should get a full copy of the rights of the child folder:

If everything matches, press the OK button to apply the change and move on to the next step.

7. When trying to remove/add a user, the system may display the following window:

We need to get around this, so we need to disable inheritance of rights for this folder. To do this, in the folder properties in the “Security” section, click the “Advanced” button:

In this window, click the “Change permissions” button and uncheck the “Add permissions inherited from parent objects” checkbox:

Click OK and answer the question Windows security We answer “Delete” (although you can also “Add” - this will simply save the current groups and users, but will also allow you to change them):

Also click the OK button in the additional security settings window.

8. Open the registry. To do this, press the key combination Win + R and in the “Run” window that opens, write regedit and click OK. (You can also search the Start menu in Windows 7 or Vista by typing regedit)

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

And we see several groups of records in this section:

We are interested in groups of the format S-1-5-21-xxxxxxxxxx-xxx... select them one by one and look at the value of the ProfileImagePath parameter. The path should lead to the folder for the profile that we need to transfer. In my case it's this one:

Next we need to change the ProfileImagePath value to the path to the new folder. To do this, right-click on the parameter and select “Change”. I write my way, and this is what I got:

10. To be on the safe side, let’s create a symbolic link to the old location; this will solve many problems, especially if some program decides to ignore the new location. To do this, delete the old user folder and open the command line and write the following there:

mklink /J “C:\Users\*user*” “D:\Users\*user*”

Where instead *user* you need to write the name of your folder. For example, " C:\Users\Vladimir"

All that remains is to restart the system and log in with your main account.

That's all. I hope you found this article useful, click one of the buttons below to tell your friends about it. Also subscribe to site updates by entering your e-mail in the field on the right or subscribing to the group on VKontakte.

But I think it’s very useful, so I’m posting it corrected and expanded copy.

The task of transferring a user profile folder from a system drive to another logical or physical drive in a Windows operating system is very urgent for a number of reasons:

• The need to separate operational information (system) and archive data (user data) is caused, for example, by the need to store system files on a high-speed but less reliable RAID0 disk array.
• There is no need for additional information transfer when reinstalling the OS.
• Compared to transferring an individual user profile, transferring the Users folder is more preferable, since the profiles of all subsequent users of the computer will also be saved in the right place, and there will be no need to go through the transfer procedure again.

One of the most elegant and efficient methods for carrying out such a transfer is the ability to determine the location of the user profiles folder during the system installation stage. Microsoft provides us with this opportunity for Windows 7 under the name Audit Mode. You can read more about this mode in the next article.

Now about the actual scenario for transferring the Users folder:

1. You should perform a normal installation of Windows 7 in any way convenient for you, stopping at the step where the installer program will ask you to enter the computer name and user name.
2. At the screen for entering your computer name and username, press CTRL + SHIFT + F3. The computer will restart and boot into Audit Mode. In this case, the system will be in this mode until you run the sysprep utility with the /oobe switch or select the appropriate item in the windowed version of this utility, which starts in Audit Mode every time the system starts.

   

3. Since at this point you will already have Windows 7 installed, but not fully configured, before assigning a new location for the user profiles folder, you must first prepare the disk subsystem, that is, create and format the partition that you plan to use to house the Users folder .
4. Now you need to create a configuration file to configure the location of the Users folder, here are its contents:

   x86 version (download):
   D:\Users D:\ProgramData
   Version for x64 (download):
   D:\Users D:\ProgramData
   Save it under any name, for example unattend.xml.

   Attention! The file must be saved in UTF-8 encoding (and for those who understand UTF8 + BOM).

   

5. The window with the title "System Preparation Program 3.14" must be closed. Otherwise, when you run the following command, you will receive the error: “Another copy of this application is already running.”

   It is better to save the "unattend.xml" file on your hard drive rather than on a flash drive, because when using this file, the next time you reboot, the flash drive will not yet be connected and the system will report an error and will constantly reboot. The entire installation process will have to start over. Assuming that the unattend.xml file has been saved in the root of the C drive, then the command to apply it will be as follows:

   C:\Windows\System32\sysprep\sysprep.exe /oobe /reboot /unattend:C:\unattend.xml
   

   

   
   The computer will restart.

   If the file is NOT saved in UTF-8 encoding (as described above), you will receive the following error: “A fatal error occurred while running the Sysprep program on the computer.”

   

6. Returning to the window for setting the computer name and user name, complete the installation.
7. After booting the computer, make sure that the D:\Users and D:\ProgramData folders exist and that the folder of the user whose name you specified at the final installation stage is in D:\Users.

   

As a bonus, you can also take advantage of the so-called advantages of preventing errors associated with explicitly specifying the previous paths of user profile folders. To do this, create two symbolic links using the mklink utility (run with administrator rights):

Mklink /J C:\Users D:\Users mklink /J C:\ProgramData D:\ProgramData
Thus, now, even when accessing the same paths, any program will not notice the substitution and will work with folders on drive C, although in fact they will be located in the location you configured.

To make some applications compatible with Windows XP, I recommend making the following symbolic link:
mklink /J "C:\Documents and Settings" D:\Users
If the users folder already existed and you set the same user name during the initial setup of the operating system, then another folder for the profile will be created, and the old one will remain untouched. All files from the old folder should be transferred to the new one manually (it is advisable to boot under a completely different user so that files in the profile folder are not blocked).

Therefore, I recommend that after installing Windows and after creating user profiles (for this you need to log in interactively once as each user), create a system image on the C: drive. In the event of a failure, you deploy the system from an image in which user profiles are linked to their folders, and the problem described in the paragraph above will not occur.