Finally! How to set the user’s data folder in a different drive in Vista/Windows 7, and re-use it after re-installing the OS

Have you ever wanted your C:\Users\YourUserName folder to reside in a different drive (other than the C: drive which you will need to re-format and re-install the OS occasionally..)?

Well, in Vista you can relocate the special sub-folders (i.e. Documents, Pictures, Videos, etc.). In Windows 7, we have the ‘Libraries’ features. But neither one of these OSs let you actually relocate the entire C:\Users folder or even on of the C:\Users\YourUserName folder to a different drive as a hole.

The need is obvious – You want to be able to easily re-install (or sometimes upgrade) your system drive, while keeping your data, which is not only documents, videos and pictures but also AppData (where the outlook.pst files reside for example), your Received Files folder and other data which is all under your user folder.

If only the C:\Users\YourUserName folder was D:\Users\YourUserName , life was much easier..

Well, after many hours of reading blogs and forums, I came across a few solutions for relocating the users folder, but no solution found for re-using the relocated user folders after re-installing the OS. Meaning – lets say I was able to relocate my user folder to D:\Users\MyUserName. The problem is that after I formated the system drive (c:) and re-installed the OS, re-creating a MyUserName account, than removing the created user folder and re-referencing the OS to the old D:\Users\MyUserName, the OS do not recognize this folder as a legitimate folder of the the newly created account. Either it loggs you off right after you try to login to your account or it creates a temporary account whenever you try to login.

Finally, I found a solution for that, so I figured it is worth blogging about.

I’ll summarize the list of steps you need to perform in order to relocate your user folder to a different drive, including the steps for re-referencing this folder after re-installing your OS!

Steps for Moving the C:\User\YourUser to D:\User\YourUser :

Install the OS, and create your user. We’ll call it ‘YourUser’
Create a temp user (with administrative privileges). We’ll call it ‘TempUser’
Login with TempUser account
Make sure you configured your windows explorer to list hidden and system files (Folder options)
Move (cut/paste) the entire C:\User\YourUser folder to a different drive, for example to D:\User\YourUser .
Create a HardLink from C:\User\YourUser to D:\User\YourUser , so when the OS looks for C:\User\YourUser it will find it in D:\User\YourUser . To create this hard link, open the cmd window with administrator privileges

Read more: Guy Ronen's Blog

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