Managing SSD and HDD

Hello @Vellaura,

Vellaura said:

So how do I go about having my desktop, programs, images, files and games on my harddrive?

Look at these . . .

> How to Move Your Desktop Folder Location in Windows 10
> How to Move Users Folder to another Location in Windows 10

I hope this helps.

If you install traditional exe/dll programs starting with a folder on your hard drive (or any partition other than C) you will find you may run into problems later on. These programs typically create and use
- other folders in various places on C:
- registry keys on C:
- possibly use drivers on C:

Consider what happens if your hard drive fails. You then have all manner of files on C: related to that program- but you may not now be able to uninstall it as the main folder (on your hard drive) no longer exists.

Only if a program is fully portable can it be located on your hard drive completely independently of C:

If you maintain good frequent disk images, you may well mostly be ok.

The space saving on C: by specifying an installation path for a given program to your hard drive will vary from program to program. It may be minimal.

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Personal files and folders.

Given that programs often create working space for themselves in Documents, Videos, Music, etc I prefer to simply create my own 'My documents' 'My videos' etc on a second drive- quite independent of the defaults Windows provides.

That means these contain MY documents and not THEIR - the programs'- folders.

These folders can be added to a library if you wish, or you can create a new library and and them to that, so they are treated as folders related to a particular account just like the default library folders. There's nothing magical about those- you can create your own (tutorials available).


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Considering relocating user folders (Documents, Music etc).

People can make the most horrible mistakes when doing this. There are threads where this has happened. Whilst Windows and tutorials support this, I'd never personally risk doing this (see comments about those these are filled by installed programs.
above).

That's two basic reasons I prefer to create my own folders on a second drive.

Vellaura said:

So how do I go about having my desktop, programs, images, files and games on my harddrive?

Create Soft and Hard Symbolic Links in Windows

But when you want to "move" folders from protected folders, like programfiles, you need to take ownership/permissions first. For example, I have moved Chrome's cache like this:

Code:

takeown /s %computername% /u %username% /f "%LocalAppData%\Google\Chrome Beta" /r /d y
icacls "%LocalAppData%\Google\Chrome Beta" /inheritance:r /grant:r %username%:(OI)(CI)F /t /l /q /c
icacls "%LocalAppData%\Google\Chrome Beta" /inheritance:e /grant:r %username%:(OI)(CI)F /t /l /q /c
xcopy "%LocalAppData%\Google\Chrome Beta" "Z:\Chrome" /s /i /y
rd "%LocalAppData%\Google\Chrome Beta" /s /q
mklink /d "%LocalAppData%\Google\Chrome Beta" "Z:\Chrome"