Moving the user folder from the SSD, and other stuff?

Cliff_ForsterCliff_Forster Icrontian
edited July 2011 in Hardware
Good citizens of Icrontic.

So I got this awesome consolation prize for not making it to Expo, a nice 50 GB SSD. I figure I'm going to use it as my boot drive, plus for a few basic programs (Chrome, Foxit, Picassa etc) vs. the larger 90 GB SSD I have installed now. I'll use that to move games I play off my spindle drive onto an SSD, I figure the half dozen of so games I frequent will be no problem fitting, then I'll use the spindle drive for the users folder which brings me to ask.....

What is the proper way to do this so its seamless when you save new pictures and music in windows 7? Right now I just have some sloppy files I created and called music and pictures and pointed itunes (shudder, the Wife makes me), and Picasa to the goods. I know there is a better way, but it is the subject of much internet debate, and if you read some of the guides, the methods are actually kind of complex, setting up a temp admin account to move the shell to log back off then point at it, so on so forth.

So my question is this, what is the best practice to move the users folder off the boot SSD onto the hard drive? Say my wife saves some new music in itunes, how can I make that as seemless and fool proof as possible, she saves, it goes to the spindle drive, itunes is happy. I save my pictures, it goes to the spindle drive, Picassa is happy.

Thanks all.

Comments

  • ZanthianZanthian Mitey Worrier Icrontian
    edited July 2011
    I just won the ssd at the Lan. I have windows 7 installed on the ssd and i was just adding my old hdd folders to the libraries in windows 7. I am interested in seeing if there is a solution to your question though.
  • SnarkasmSnarkasm Madison, WI Icrontian
    edited July 2011
    1) Open Windows Explorer
    2) Go to C:\Users\< yourusername >
    3) Pick the "My Music", "My Photos", "My Videos", the folders you want to relocate, right click, and go to properties
    4) Click the Location tab
    5) Change the location to wherever you want it to be using the Move button.

    Then go to the Libraries portion and make sure that your Music, Pictures, Documents, Videos libraries are all including the proper locations - again, right click and go to properties. The locations will be listed out in the only tab there.
  • RootWyrmRootWyrm Icrontian
    edited July 2011
    Snarkasm wrote:
    1) Open Windows Explorer
    2) Go to C:\Users\< yourusername >
    3) Pick the "My Music", "My Photos", "My Videos", the folders you want to relocate, right click, and go to properties
    4) Click the Location tab
    5) Change the location to wherever you want it to be using the Move button.

    Then go to the Libraries portion and make sure that your Music, Pictures, Documents, Videos libraries are all including the proper locations - again, right click and go to properties. The locations will be listed out in the only tab there.

    This is not recommended. Reason being; this only relocates libraries. All of your temporary files, application save settings, and a LOT more will still be on the SSD afterward. Easily a few gigabytes of data. (It also fails to relocate things like browser cache, which is really bad.)

    What I recommend, is consulting the following Microsoft KB articles.
    KB 949977 - Changing Users directory and the ProgramData directory to a disk drive other than the disk drive that contains the Windows directory
    This is for unattend.xml / Windows AIK installations, and the recommended method. (This does apply to Windows 7 as well, BTW.) You should do a clean install and ensure the SSD has ONE partition and does NOT have the 100MB recovery partition.

    That said, if you don't want to do it the WAIK way, do NOT do it the Hard Link way. I speak from painful experience; certain applications and games do NOT handle this well and pitch fits. It's just not worth the hassle.
    You can use ProfileRelocator for existing users.

    Unfortunately, if you're on Windows 7 Home Premium (which lots of folks are,) there's no easy way to change the %Users% directory from C:\Users to D:\Users - I'm given to understand it's a nightmare of registry hacks. If you have Ultimate, I have my notes around here somewhere for non-WAIK %Users% relocation.
  • SnarkasmSnarkasm Madison, WI Icrontian
    edited July 2011
    It sounded like he was interested in moving the large stuff - pictures, music, etc - onto the alternative drive, for which the relocation route is a perfectly valid method. No, it won't migrate the entire users folder - and no, I don't believe I implied that it did - but it does relocate pictures and music in a method that applications will respect and doesn't involve doing complicated registry hacks or making temporary user accounts.

    Just sayin'.
  • Cliff_ForsterCliff_Forster Icrontian
    edited July 2011
    Snarkasm wrote:
    It sounded like he was interested in moving the large stuff - pictures, music, etc - onto the alternative drive, for which the relocation route is a perfectly valid method. No, it won't migrate the entire users folder - and no, I don't believe I implied that it did - but it does relocate pictures and music in a method that applications will respect and doesn't involve doing complicated registry hacks or making temporary user accounts.

    Just sayin'.

    I appreciate both responses. Snark, I think you had what I had in mind. I was thinking there might be a similar answer for moving the entire user folder, but I suppose windows demands keeping bits of that on the boot partition. Not a problem though, this seems to solve my problem, and its actually a really simple and straight forward solution. Thanks.
  • RootWyrmRootWyrm Icrontian
    edited July 2011
    Snarkasm wrote:
    It sounded like he was interested in moving the large stuff - pictures, music, etc - onto the alternative drive, for which the relocation route is a perfectly valid method. No, it won't migrate the entire users folder - and no, I don't believe I implied that it did - but it does relocate pictures and music in a method that applications will respect and doesn't involve doing complicated registry hacks or making temporary user accounts.

    Just sayin'.

    Yeah, the problem there is that while it does take care of that, there are a couple problems that remain with both options. (Sorry, it's being one of those days.)

    A) If you move %Users% that includes Public. Some applications and games install there by default now. And some can't be overidden.
    B) Windows still has 2+ temp locations; TMP and TEMP in Environment Variables. By default this goes to %Users%\%UserName%\AppData\Temp

    So you have pros and cons to each. Now that said, it's up to the user to weigh the pros and cons of each. The general recommendation per Microsoft is to move the %Users% folder, to ensure consistency of operations and so on and so forth. But, there's also the 'just move the libraries' recommendation from Microsoft as well.

    So, there's arguably a right and wrong way, and a wrong and right way. The reason it's not recommended to only relocate libraries is because there's very little space on the SSD and it will leave less room for other applications that may benefit from SSD. The other problem is, see 2 - a LOT of things like to use temp space, use a LOT of it, and NOT clean it up. For example, GamersGate will use %TEMP% for temporary files (but does clean them up) while DigitalRiver tends to dump a lot of large files into %TEMP% and does not clean them up always. You can override the environment variables and use a temporary directory on the spinning disk, but there's no guarantee that any given application or installer will obey it.

    Hopefully, that makes the situation a lot clearer. :)
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