When creating a new user in Windows, the system allocates special folders for him to save various data: documents, images, music, videos, etc .; creating folders of the same name for this. By default, all of them are stored in the user’s folder on the disk with the system installed, most often it’s drive C. Most of the users in these standard folders store all their files.

But different situations happen, and at some point the operating system may crash and stop loading, the only way out is to completely reinstall Windows. Accordingly, all user files that were stored in the Downloads, Documents, Music, Video, Images folders will be deleted without a trace. In order to prevent this and not to think in the future that your photos, documents and music collection may be lost, you need to move the user's standard folders to another drive.

How to move standard user folders in Windows to another drive

You can move folders either to another partition of the disk, if it has several partitions, or to another physical disk: internal or USB. For example, when Windows is installed on an SSD drive, and a regular HDD is used for data.

Step 1 Go to the user folder, it is located at:

  C: \\ Users \\ Username

Step 2 Select the folder you want to transfer, right-click on it and select Properties in the context menu

Step 3 In the window that appears, go to the Location tab. Click the Move button and specify the path where you want to move this folder. You can move it to an existing folder or create a new one

Step 4 Click the Apply button for the changes to take effect.

Step 5 In the dialog box that appears, confirm the movement by clicking Yes

Do the same for other user directories.

Now your folders will no longer be stored on the system drive, and after the next reinstallation of Windows, all data will be in integrity. You will only need to re-specify the path to the data folders on another drive.

Transferring user profile folders from the system drive to another drive is needed to free a relatively small system drive (for example, SSD).
  The operation is unsafe and controversial - who does not know how and why - is not worth doing.

It will take extra. xxcopy utility. Pro version required. Although it is paid, but for our task, its official trial period of 60 days is quite enough.
  So:

1. Install xxcopy.
2. We create a new temporary user with the name, for example, “TU”, which will be used to perform the data transfer operation and issue him administrator rights.
3. We reboot (to remove the locks on the files used) and log in as a new user (“TU”).
4. We start the Windows command line in administrator mode. To copy a folder from drive C: to drive D: run the command:
   xxcopy c: \\ Users d: \\ Users / E / H / K / SC / oE1
   If you have other drive letters, substitute your own. As a result, the folder will be copied   properly. Errors, if any, can be ignored.
5. Next, run the command regedit.In it we find the registry branch HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \\ SOFTWARE \\ Microsoft \\ Windows NT \\ CurrentVersion \\ ProfileList.In this branch we change the key values:
   •   Default   to "D: \\ Users \\ Default"
   • ProfilesDirectory   to "D: \\ Users"
   • Public   to "D: \\ Users \\ Public"
6. In the same branch there are branches with parameters of user profiles already registered in the system (branches with long names are what they are) - for each user it is necessary to change the value of the key “ ProfileImagePath»To the directory on the portable disk.
7. The temporary user is no longer needed - everything that was required of him is completed. At the same time, so far, nothing irreversible has been done - all the data in reality was copied, not transferred. Therefore, in the case of “something went wrong ...” you can always return the status quo. Now we are again overloaded and we enter under a real administrator account.
8. We make sure that the login is correct and the system boots without question. Now you can proceed to the next steps.
9. Again, run the Windows command prompt in administrator mode and execute the commands:
   • rd "C: \\ Documents and Settings"   - removal of a symbolic link to the old Users folder
   • rd "C: \\ Users" / S   - delete the oldest Users folder
   • mklink / D “C: \\ Documents and Settings” “D: \\ Users”
   • mklink / D “C: \\ Users” “D: \\ Users”

Now, on your system, the Users user profile folder is located on the desired drive and, in addition, there are symbolic links to the new folder that protect the system from incorrect addressing to the old address.

Transferring user profiles to another drive and changing the path to them is a very difficult task. However, it is quite doable, and in several different ways. After the migration is completed successfully, the old profile folders can be deleted without problems.

Suppose you want to transfer a profile from disk FROM:   to disk D:. Just copying the profile files does not make sense, since this will not work.

The easiest and most affordable way is to use   (Windows Easy Transfer). Thus, you can transfer absolutely the entire profile, including the AppData folder and a variety of system links associated with the profile.

First of all, you need to log into the account that we will transfer.
Next, go to the Start -\u003e All Programs -\u003e Accessories -\u003e System Tools -\u003e Windows Transfer Tool.

Will start Windows Data Transfer Toolin which you just need to choose the place where the user data will be saved. It is best to transfer them to an external or USB flash drive, although no one bothers to choose a network drive.

As a result, we get a file with the extension .MIGin which precious data will be stored.

1. Log in with the Administrator account and delete the old profile and all its files (if you’re scared, you can save them first by copying them to a safe place).

2. Open ( win + r -> regedit).

3. Go to the branch HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \\ SOFTWARE \\ MICROSOFT \\ WINDOWS NT \\ CurrentVersion \\ ProfileList.

4. Find the value ProfilesDirectory   and enter the address of the new folder for it - for example, D: \\ Users.

5. Reboot.

6. Log in with the Administrator account.

7. Create a new user account (Start -\u003e Control Panel -\u003e All Control Panel Items -\u003e User Accounts). Call it the same as the remote account - however, this is just for convenience.

8. Log out and log in with the new account you just created. Now the profile folder will be created where we specified earlier for the value ProfilesDirectory.

9. It remains to find the previously created file .MIG   and double click on it. The wizard will transfer all user information to the new profile. If the name of the new account does not match the old one, then in Transfer Wizard, in additional parameters, you just need to specify a new name.

This method relates to profile transfer in a long-installed system. However, sometimes it makes sense to do this immediately after installing Windows 7.

Choosing a User Profile Location When Installing Windows 7

If you reinstall or install Windows 7 “from scratch”, it’s convenient to choose a new location for the future user profile right at the installation stage.

After the main stages of installing Windows 7, we will stop in the window where you need to create a new user in the system. Do not rush to indicate it and click Shift + F10to open a command prompt window.

Now let's move the profile to a new place. In our example, we move the folder C: \\ Users   to folder E: \\ Usersas well as folders Programfiles   and Programdata.

1.   Copy profiles, folder Program files   and Programdata   to a new place.

robocopy "C: \\ Users" "E: \\ Users" / E / COPYALL / XJ
robocopy "C: \\ Program Files" "E: \\ Program Files" / E / COPYALL / XJ
robocopy "C: \\ ProgramData" "E: \\ ProgramData" / E / COPYALL / XJ

2.   Delete the old folders and create the necessary links between the folders.

Program Files Folder:

rmdir "C: \\ Program Files" / S / Q
mklink / J "C: \\ Program Files" "E: \\ Program Files"

Profiles:

rmdir "C: \\ users" / S / Q
mklink / J "C: \\ users" "E: \\ users"

Programdata folder:

rmdir "C: \\ ProgramData" / S / Q
mklink / J "C: \\ ProgramData" E: \\ ProgramData "

It is likely that when deleting folders with the command rmdir   an error message will appear.
You can delete these folders later, after rebooting.

Now enter regedit   to open the registry editor.

Go to the following branch:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \\ Software \\ Microsoft \\ Windows \\ CurrentVersion
Change the values \u200b\u200bof the folder path in it ProgramFilesDir   and Commonfilesdirby inserting a disk E: \\   instead of a disk C: \\.

Now go to the list of user profiles on the branch:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \\ Software \\ Microsoft \\ Windows NT \\ CurrentVersion \\ ProfileList
  and change the paths again by specifying E: \\   instead C: \\.

Close the registry editor. Now enter the following command:

shutdown / r / t 0

The computer will turn off, turn it on again. The user creation step will appear again, create it and this will install Windows 7 and the transfer of profiles will be completed.

Hello dear readers of the blog www.site. Today we will complete the process description. operating system transfer   Windows 7 with saving user profiles, installed programs, data and settings to two hard drives. One of the drives is a solid state drive SSD   60 GB, the second is a regular mechanical HDD.

The decision to make a dual configuration of hard drives was made after the volumes occupied by the operating system and user data. Due to the fact that in total they clearly exceeded 60 GB, it was not possible to transfer everything to one small SSD-drive.

Looking ahead, I’ll say that for a desktop computer this solution was not only successful, but also very profitable from a financial point of view. The total cost of a small SSD and a mechanical HDD so far is less than the cost of one large solid-state drive.

Even if it’s not a pity for “native ones”, most likely, the volume of one SSD is really not enough. For example, I only have folders with photos occupy about 130 GB. And this despite the fact that the photos are mainly in jpg format. And who has RAW? And if the video? This is me to the fact that you still have to either install another HDD, or connect an external one.

As for the speed of the system, initially there were serious concerns about whether it would negatively affect the transfer of user profiles of Windows 7 to a regular mechanical disk. The fears were not confirmed - everything “flies.” No, surely the response of the computer would be even faster if not only the operating system, but also the data were located on the solid-state drive. But something tells me that in most practical cases this difference would not be very noticeable.

We return to the process. Last time, we transferred the Windows 7 operating system to an SSD and user profiles to a mechanical HDD. To transfer user profiles, we tried to use the standard Windows 7 “Windows Data Transfer Tool” wizard.

Unfortunately, the result was not quite what I would like to see - the settings of some programs were not saved. This can be partially explained by the fact that with such a profile transfer, the absolute paths to the files change and some programs cannot find them. Apparently, “Windows Data Transfer Tool” makes sense to use to solve those tasks for which it is directly intended. In a word, this is not Linux for you, where in \\ home you can mount any partition on any drive.

Today I will describe a second, very simple, way to transfer Windows 7 user folders to another drive. The idea of \u200b\u200bsuch a transfer was suggested to me by the Microsoft wizard at the moment when I refused to deploy the saved profiles to the second disk and I had to spoof it by creating symbolic links. Here we use them one hundred percent.

Migrate Windows 7 user folders using symbolic links

We return to the moment when the preliminary optimization of the space occupied by the system on the C: drive has already been done, but the original user profiles from the C: drive have not yet been deleted. We copy user directories to any accessible place or immediately to the place where they are supposed to be placed in the final analysis.

You can do this in various ways, the main thing is to save permissions on files and folders and not lose system and hidden ones. For example, using the command xcopy   on the command line with administrator privileges:

xcopy C: \\ Users \\ UserName \\ X: \\ Users \\ UserName \\ / E / H / O / X

Username   - name of the user profile directory;

X: \\ Users \\ UserName   - destination folder;

/ E

/ H   - Hidden and system files are copied;

/ O   - ACL access control lists and owner information are saved;

/ X   - Copy file audit information.

Or, also on the command line, with the command robocopy:

robocopy C: \\ Users \\ UserName \\ X: \\ Users \\ UserName \\ / E / COPYALL / XJ

C: \\ Users \\ UserName, X: \\ Users \\ UserName   - source and result;

/ E   - Copies directories with subdirectories, including empty ones;

/ COPYALL   - all information about the files is copied (owner information, audit information, etc.);

/ Xj   - exclude connection points.

Command robocopy   interesting in that it is designed to replicate data and is able to remove "extra" files from the replica. It can be successfully used to create backups without completely overwriting all the files.

13 comments

Well, I did it right. Rebooted, everything worked ok. And then the OS even stopped loading. I can’t even reinstall Windows. Only a black screen.

• Rustam, your problem cannot be related to the transfer of profiles. In any case, on C: \\, even if you have not specifically created a new user whose profile is not transferable, as recommended in the article, there is an “Administrator”. If everything is in order with the system itself, then if the second disk with transferred profiles is unavailable, there can be no such horrors - Windows will boot. Tell us in more detail at what point the black screen appears, after which it started. And what does it mean

  I can not even reinstall Windows

1. The fact of the matter is that I had only one Administrator profile. I then transferred it from SSD to HHD. Then, on drive D, where I transferred the Administrator profile, the Users folder was invisible. Rebooted the laptop. Windows does not boot. Even the Windows logo does not appear. I decided to reinstall the OS, in AHCI mode the installation does not start at all. I transfer it to IDE mode, it stumbles at the “installation begins” step. Further nowhere. Although I had previously installed the same copy of Windows with this flash drive on the same ultrabook.
     It seems that something is wrong in the BIOS or what?

   I want to connect the laptop to my computer and format all the drives. Could you tell me how to connect a laptop and see all its contents from a computer?

   • You have something very complicated in mind. Content is easier to see by booting from a Live CD. For example, Parted Magic with GParted. I wrote about him. If you were to understand what kind of Windows you are setting, the problems with AHCI are embarrassing. Again, you can split and format disks by starting the installation of Windows 7. I described how to make a bootable USB flash drive with Windows.

Thanks for the Parted Magic prog. I downloaded it, but apparently something in the tables is not right. When trying to create or format a section, an Input / Otput error during read or during write on dev / sda is thrown. That generally boot sectors HHD and SSD in BIOS disappear. I don’t understand what to do. It looks like something with GPT, MBR tables. Is there any way to fix the tables? By the way, the Asus Zenbook UX32A laptop.

• MBR and GPT are not tables, but records at the beginning of the disk. They cannot affect the visibility of disks in the BIOS. As far as I understand, your ultrabook is not supposed to use SSD independently, but as a cache for the HDD. I think that a solution to the problem should be sought here. In fact, this laptop can work with SSD as a separate drive?

Yes, the SSD is designed as a cache, but I installed the OS on the SSD. And it worked perfectly. Then I decided to transfer the user folders to another drive. Moved and .... 🙂

• I can’t understand how you managed to transfer a single user to another disk - when copying the profile there should have been a huge amount of errors due to file locking. But most importantly, I can’t understand how even this wrong action could affect the inability to reinstall the system. There must be something else. Mb did something switch in the BIOS?

Well, to transfer a single user, I created a temporary administrator, and after the transfer, I deleted this temporary administrator account. When copying user files there were a couple of times questions, but I missed them. I don’t understand about the impossibility of reinstalling the system (It’s just that the impossibility of installing a new OS appeared even before I rummaged through the BIOS. But even after resetting the changes to the BIOS, it’s the same all the same.

• Yeah. With the transfer, it is now clear, that is, there was still a service account. But with a laptop it’s completely not clear. If you can solve the problem, but I have no doubt about it, be sure to unsubscribe. Very interesting. Unfortunately, not having at hand a similar sample to give you some practical advice is problematic. Sometimes the solution is hidden under the very nose. I remember how we once fought midnight with a server that refused to start after changing the controller. What just did not. Thank God they didn’t really ditch. But it turned out that just by this moment they were already stupefied and tried to boot from the wrong device.

made a bootable Acronis flash drive.
  And he gave an error "E000101F4: No hard drives found". How can this be if the BIOS has this situation:

Boot opton priorities


i go to
Hard Drive BBS Priorities
  and there:
  Boot Option # 1
  Boot Option # 2

• It could even be. Acronis can easily not see anything. For example, he doesn’t see disks connected via USB to a computer with an Intel DX58SO motherboard. Previously, too, something constantly came up with the same plan. To create backups, I now mainly use Live-CD with.

Unlike a complete reinstallation of Windows and subsequent reinstallation of the software, restoring the user's personal settings is a much more tedious task. You need to return the old wallpaper, sort your personal folders in the library, and most importantly, restore many different settings related to the user account. In a word, one hassle and nothing more.

In such a situation, a small, uncomplicated, but very useful utility called Transwiz can help out a lot. It is intended for backup and transfer of profile data to another computer or the same computer running Windows 7, 8.1 and 10 after a complete reinstall of the system.

Transwiz differs from its analogues in simplicity and ease of use - the copy and transfer procedure is carried out using a step-by-step wizard. The Russian language is absent in the program, but this should not become an obstacle. After creating a profile archive, its contents can be viewed in the ZIP archiver or Explorer, and if necessary, extract the necessary files from it.

Some features of using Transwiz

You can back up data from one account only from another, but if your PC has only one main profile, you will have to create a second one or activate the built-in administrator account and make backups from under it. This is especially true of the transfer of the local administrator profile, which will be considered used by Transwiz, even if you run the program from under the normal user account.

Note

We remind you that you can activate the hidden Administrator account with the command net user Admin / active: yesrun in an elevated privileged CMD console.

How to work with Transwiz

When starting the utility, the wizard will ask you two questions: “I want to transfer data to another computer” and “I have data I want to transfer to this computer”, that is, are you going to transfer data to another PC or to the same one. Select the first and click "Next".

In the window that opens, select the desired profile, click "Next" and specify the directory to save the profile backup.

At this point, you can enable compression (optional).

When proceeding to the next step, the utility will offer to set a password for the archive with a copy of the data, here we also leave everything to your discretion.

After that, the backup procedure will be launched, the progress of which you can observe at the bottom of the application window.

The created ZIP archive includes library folders (Music, Documents, Favorites, Videos, etc.), desktop configuration, OneDrive folder, logs, databases, as well as the AppData hidden directory with software settings.

In approximately the same way, but in the reverse order, the profile recovery procedure is performed on the new system. Starting the program, this time select the option “I have data I want to transfer to this computer” and specify the path to the archive with data.

The computer name (Enter the domian) is not changed, click "Next".

Transwiz will display a message that this account does not exist and will immediately offer to create it. Click “Yes” and select the type of account you need, for example, Administrator.

In the next window, you can specify new user data, or leave everything by default. In the latter case, the data will be taken from the backup.

Almost everything is ready, it remains only to click "Next" and wait for the backup with the user data to be unpacked. At the end of the procedure, close the current session and log in under the new old account.

If you did not specify a username and password in the Transwiz window, the system may offer to change the password when entering the restored account. You need to enter it only in the two lower fields, the first upper one is left empty.

In any case, you can reset or change the password from the work account by opening the command line with administrator rights and running the net user user password command, where user is the name of the local user and password is the new password. Better yet, first enter your old local login and password in the program window and check the box “Password never expires”.

Note

You can transfer data to Transwiz not only between Windows of the same version, you can import a profile from Windows 10 to Windows 8.1 and even 7, and vice versa, only in this case full compatibility of components and settings is not guaranteed. As for universal applications, they will need to be updated when entering the transferred account.

Have a great day!

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