Move Users Folder Location in Windows 10  


  1. Posts : 15
    Windows 10 Pro
       #880

    Thank you for the helpful suggestions and for all of the help. I greatly appreciate it.
      My Computer


  2. Posts : 17,661
    Windows 10 Pro
    Thread Starter
       #881

    johnshaia said:
    Thank you for the helpful suggestions and for all of the help. I greatly appreciate it.
    You are welcome.

    An important thing I forgot to mention: clean install naturally means that all installed software will be lost. All software you want to have needs to be reinstalled and reactivated if something requiring a product key or license.
      My Computer


  3. Posts : 28
    Win 10 Pro x64
       #882

    The NVME Samsung SSD 950 Pro 256 GB installed in a M.2 slot is not easily recognized as the boot drive. Only after moving the hard drive (with four partitions on it) to the SATA 11_12 storage controller (could be used as non-bootable eSata connection) and using the UEFI on my Asus Z170 Deluxe motherboard to disable every other SATA connection, would the C: boot drive appear before the four partitions on my HDD.
    I used recovery options to boot to a command prompt and checked the order with Diskpart. However, when sysprep rebooted instead of OOBE providing an opportunity to create a dummy user account, an "Other User" account was listed that could not be signed into.
    A usb flash drive Win10 installation media was used to boot to a command prompt, and Diskpart showed that the drive order had shifted.

    Acronis was used to restore the C: drive Win10 partition. On starting Win 10 again the Users Folders had been written to the F: drive (my intended target). An Administrator Folder had also been created.

    Would a repair install/ in place upgrade be a better option? It seems the drive order is being mixed after sysprep rebooted.
      My Computer


  4. Posts : 2,666
    Windows 11 21H2 (22000.593)
       #883

    Could you perhaps alter the boot order to make the device on that particular SATA channel to be the default boot device in the BIOS / UEFI?
      My Computers


  5. Posts : 28
    Win 10 Pro x64
       #884

    I did set the boot partition to be the default.
    The Recovery partition on the boot drive, was not assigned a drive letter prior to attempting to move the User folders default location, but when I checked with Diskpart it had been assigned a drive letter.
    I am also wondering if after sysprep ran and the reboot to Win10 failed (where a dummy account would need be created), if booting from the Win10 install USB (to access the Command Prompt) and then using Diskpart to re-assign the drive letters would solve the problem.

    Exasperating.
      My Computer


  6. Posts : 28
    Win 10 Pro x64
       #885

    Only the Samsung NVMe boot drive and Crucial 240 Gbyte SSD as the D: drive are present.
    Unlinked my OneDrive and iCloud accounts and disabled the virus scanner. Disabled the paging file.

    I did a upgrade/repair install from an ISO, mounted from iexplorer. Instead of rebooting to setup, the install booted to my Microsoft account login!
    After login to Windows the setup begins, but quits part way through and puts me to the desktop.

    I tried to repair/reinstall again, but this time did not select download upgrades and unplugged the ethernet cable from the computer.
    Install ran a checkdisk repair at some point during the install, and then continued, but again rebooted to the login for my Microsoft account.

    It would be good to start the new year with the user folders on a separate drive.

    This is a new Asus Z170-Deluxe motherboard, purchased at out-of-box pricing. Is it possible there is a manufacturing defect in the hardware causing this unexpected behavior?

    Suggestions?

    Thank you.

    >>Only the Samsung NVMe boot drive and Crucial 240 Gbyte SSD as the D: drive are present.
    Unlinked my OneDrive and iCloud accounts and disabled the virus scanner. Disabled the paging file.

    Ran the repair/upgrade install, and this time not keeping documents or user setttings.
    This only reinstalled Win 10, but doe not re-partition or delete any folders on the drive (such as AMD driver install folder).

    This worked, and required reinstalling all programs.
    Last edited by AEOUserID; 06 Jan 2017 at 22:44.
      My Computer


  7. Posts : 2
    windows 10
       #886

    Happy New Year to All,
    I've been using the User setup on a second disk following the instructions by Kari. Everything worked well. But now my User drive is failing and I need to replace it. I've tried procedure: I boot with the recovery USB drive , attach replacement drive and use robocopy /COPYALL /E /XJ from olduderdireve: to newuserdrive: . I created manually one SYMLINKD from "All Users" to C:\Programdata and one JUNCTION from "Default User" to C:\Users\Default in a newuserdrive:\Users directory. Next, shutdown, remove olduserdrive, attach newuserdrive, boot again with recovery and using diskpart I assign the same letter "E" to newuserdrive partition. Then shutdown, remove USB recovery and boot into Win10 from the SSD. On login I get cannot login into user profile, wrong password, etc.
    Is there a proper way to do a copy of the entire Userdrive to new disk drive and just replace it without much hassle?
    Will booting instead into live linux and using dd to image old disk onto a new one achieve my goal: replace drives and login back without issues ?
    Thank you for any suggestions
      My Computer


  8. Posts : 2,666
    Windows 11 21H2 (22000.593)
       #887

    de123 said:
    Happy New Year to All,
    I've been using the User setup on a second disk following the instructions by Kari. Everything worked well. But now my User drive is failing and I need to replace it. I've tried procedure: I boot with the recovery USB drive , attach replacement drive and use robocopy /COPYALL /E /XJ from olduderdireve: to newuserdrive: . I created manually one SYMLINKD from "All Users" to C:\Programdata and one JUNCTION from "Default User" to C:\Users\Default in a newuserdrive:\Users directory. Next, shutdown, remove olduserdrive, attach newuserdrive, boot again with recovery and using diskpart I assign the same letter "E" to newuserdrive partition. Then shutdown, remove USB recovery and boot into Win10 from the SSD. On login I get cannot login into user profile, wrong password, etc.
    Is there a proper way to do a copy of the entire Userdrive to new disk drive and just replace it without much hassle?
    Will booting instead into live linux and using dd to image old disk onto a new one achieve my goal: replace drives and login back without issues ?
    Thank you for any suggestions
    Booting to an alternate OS would be a better bet, for sure. Using a cloning procedure might also be a good way to go, add that would be outside of the installed OS as well.
      My Computers


  9. Posts : 17,661
    Windows 10 Pro
    Thread Starter
       #888

    de123 said:
    Thank you for any suggestions
    If not the best way to do that but at least the way I recommend:

    • "Empty" your user profile folders as much as you can, copying documents, pics, videos, music and all other personal data from all user profiles to external HDD. As following steps require you to relocate Users folder two times, the less data is left in user profile folders, the faster the relocation process. Important: Leave system folder AppData for each profile intact, do not empty / move its content!
    • Reverse the relocating, doing exactly as told in tutorial Method Two but this time relocating Users folder back to C: drive
    • Shut down the PC, replace the disk where you had Users relocated
    • Mount the new disk, boot to Windows, assign new disk the same drive ID letter than the old one had
    • Again, do as told in Method Two, now relocating Users to new disk
    • Restore the backed up personal user data from external drive to respective folders under each user profile

    Kari
      My Computer


  10. Posts : 2
    Windows 10 Pro 64 bit
       #889

    Good morning Karl.
    I've used your User folder relocation method both on my old PC and more recently on the system I've just built up.

    On the recent build, I'd installed the OS (Win 10 Pro 64 bit) in legacy mode. the motherboard (Gigabyte GA-Z170X-UD3 Ultra) supports UEFI , so I'm intending to do a re-installation and see how that goes. C: drive is a 256GB Samsung 950 Pro M.2. The User file will be going to a 2TB WD

    Can I leave my existing User folder in the HDD I'll be sending the new User folder to, or is that just asking for trouble?

    Kind regards
    Mike.
      My Computer


 

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