Move Users Folder Location in Windows 10  

Thank you Kari for this fantastic tutorial!

I am now also planning to move my user folder.

The scenario in my case is as follows.

I have been installing my programs on a dedicated SSD under the drive letter F: for many years.

However, I have not changed any variables in Windows for doing so. Instead, each time I install a program, I replace the program's default path in the installation dialog from C:\[some\program\path] to F:\[some\program\path]. This has always worked without exception.

I keep my data on a third hard disk drive with the drive letter D:

Furthermore I have two identical PCs at different locations. I synchronize the data hard drives via Internet.

I plan to use the program hard drive F: alternately on both PCs by physically carrying it back and forth between the two PCs by means of front hard drive bays like this:


I'm now planning to move the user folder also over to the swappable hard drive F:

This way I'd expect that most of the Windows and programs settings will be kept in sync on both PCs by using the F: drive on both PC's.

Do you guys believe that this will work?

Edit: I just noticed that the user-specific part of the registry (Ntuser.dat) is stored in the user folder. If I put the user folder on the removable disk F: with the installed programs, and move this disk back and forth between the two computers, then I have almost all possible settings synchronized on both computers, don't I?

Edit 2: I saved relocate.xml to drive D:, forgetting that in my case D: is a Bitlocker-encrypted drive which has to be manually unlocked after every boot. Will this affect the user folder relocation -- or is relocate.xml not needed anymore after the process reboots and does its thing?

Edit 3: After the reboot, the point circle on the Windows logo screen has now been rotating for an hour, while the HDD LED is flashing, showing HDD activity. I have only SSDs, and my user profile folder is at 23 GB with around 100,000 files. Is it normal for the relocation to take so much longer than it would take to simply move the folder in Windows Explorer?

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David P said:

Edit 3: After the reboot, the point circle on the Windows logo screen has now been rotating for an hour, while the HDD LED is flashing, showing HDD activity. I have only SSDs, and my user profile folder is at 23 GB with around 100,000 files. Is it normal for the relocation to take so much longer than it would take to simply move the folder in Windows Explorer?

Ok it took a little more than an hour, and now the entire user folder is successfully moved to drive F:!

David P said:

Edit 2: I saved relocate.xml to drive D:, forgetting that in my case D: is a Bitlocker-encrypted drive which has to be manually unlocked after every boot. Will this affect the user folder relocation -- or is relocate.xml not needed anymore after the process reboots and does its thing?

Encryption of the disk D: did not cause any problems -- it did not need to be accessed by the OOBE process after the reboot :)

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David P said:

Ok it took a little more than an hour, and now the entire user folder is successfully moved to drive F:!

Now I only seem to get difficulties assigning drive letter F: also when cloning (or carrying over, for that matter) the F: programs/user drive for use on a second PC.

When I simply add that drive to the second PC, the drive doesn't seem to get the same drive letter, which prevents me from logging in at all because the user folders are not found.

I guess I have to experiment a little by adding some further (dummy) drives, until the correct drive letter F: is assigned to that Program/User drive again...

Funny, I just cloned (within Windows) my F: drive (where all my programs are installed) to another SSD and then moved the drive letter F: from the old drive to the new one using MiniTool Partition Manager WHILE LOTS OF PROGRAMS WERE RUNNING from that drive letter F: -- INCLUDING THE WINDOWS SWAPFILE -- and not one single program, including the Chrome browser, noticed it, let alone crashed

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OK so I've done the Users folder relocation twice now (Method Two), and it has worked almost without problems.

However, both times I noticed that:

1. my pinned Taskbar icons are gone (although the shortcuts are still all present in the "User Pinned" folder now located in F:\Users\MyUsername\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch\User Pinned\TaskBar;
2. some programs that were set to autorun wouldn't automatically start after booting;
3. Trimble SketchUp would complain about some paths under C:\Users not existing (fortunately, this can be fixed in the program's settings);
4. my custom standard Windows font was reset to default; and
5. my CAD controller (3DConnexion SpaceNavigator) would not work anymore. Unfortunately, now it's even impossible to install its driver. The driver installation would start, but then roll back everything and fail.

Are these some known, or possible issues...?

Also, a Registry search brings up almost 4000 occurrences of the string "C:\Users", among them also paths to some autorun entries (that now don't work anymore).

What should I do about these Registry entries -- replace them all with "F:\Users"....?

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I just found this post by AndreyT:

AndreyT said:

BTW, I don't know whether it has been mentioned already, but this procedure suffers from some "traditional" backward-compatibility bugs in Windows, which date back all the way to Windows 7.

As you certainly know, to improve compatibility with older software, Windows creates hidden directly junctions (or, sometimes, symlinks) that "mimic" Windows XP directory structure. For example, drive C: contains a hidden junction 'Documents and Settings' that usually points to 'C:\Users'. Also, 'C:\Users\<user name>' contains a hidden junction 'My Documents' that points to 'C:\Users\<user name>\Documents' and so on and so forth.

Now, when you use this relocation procedure, Windows installer obediently relocates the 'Users' folder, but it forgets to update the target for 'C:\Documents and Settings' junction. The latter remains pointing to the non-existent original location 'C:\Users'. The same applies to 'C:\ProgramData\Documents' and 'C:\ProgramData\Desktop' junctions and probably some others.

This general bug manifests itself in many other contexts as well. For example, when you use Properties of 'Documents' folder to relocate it to a different drive, Windows "forgets" to update the hidden 'My Documents' junction.

This is probably not a big deal, since it can only affect older software, which is also thoughtlessly hardcoded to rely on Windows XP directory structure. But the issue exists. If you want to keep everything consistent, it makes sense to manually update the junctions after any relocation procedures.

In addition to the above, if you do a search for 'C:\Users' through the Registry immediately after install, you will discover that some registry values are created as pointing to 'C:\Users\...' locations. Notably, the values under 'ShellFolders' suffer from that problem. This also has to be fixed manually, if you want a proper clean install.

Is this still relevant, and should those junctions be updated manually? Also, if I replace all (3,800) occurrences of "F:\users" in the Registry by "F:\users", is this safe, or can it go catastrophically wrong?

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Also, I just saw that there is still (or, already again) stuff in C:\Users:



I wonder what I should do with this?

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David P said:

Also, I just saw that there is still (or, already again) stuff in C:\Users.
I wonder what I should do with this?

Ok so I went and deleted the entire C:\Users folder, and relocated the Outlook *.OST file from C:\Users\MyUsername\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook to the respective place on drive F: this way.

David P said:

Also, if I replace all (3,800) occurrences of "F:\users" in the Registry by "F:\users", is this safe, or can it go catastrophically wrong?

Also here, I went and changed all occurrences from C: to F:

So far, nothing much happened. I hope it remains that way.

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I don't mean to be heretical, only asking: there are still tutorials to be found where people seem to relocate their Users folder using Junctions, or even Softlinks, like for example here.

Is there a reason that this would not work, or break something, nowadays in Windows 10?