Moving user folder to drive D

Many users have C:\ with a small SSD and D:\ with a larger HDD.

Windows puts the user folders are on C:\, which means that AppData, Downloads, and Documents for several users rapidly fill up the smaller disk. The whole point of the larger disk is user data.

Plenty of discussions (1, 2 3, 4, 5, 6, 7) make it clear that moving user data is difficult or risky, with sysprep, hardlinks, registry edits, and other deep technical work that is not suitable for non-technical users.

Even just moving Documents is blocked because of a link -- I think OneDrive did this, putting Documents is under C:\Users\MyName\OneDrive\Document. (And it hardcoded the user name instead of using a variable). Also, Documents is not the main culprit -- AppData is.

Is there an easy and safe way to set the user folders in D:\?

If not, it seems that the 900 GB disk is of little value other than perhaps manually moving movies to it.

Is there an easy and safe way to set the user folders in D:?

If not, it seems that the 900 GB disk is of little value other than perhaps manually moving movies to it.

Is there an easy way to move USERS? No (95%)

900 GB disk is of little value?

Depends on your point of view. I have explained a little more below.

A C: Drive has to be pretty small for a full Windows system not to fit.

Some economical machines have 128 GB SSD C: drives and a slow HDD for storing data. This was never a good choice.

Numerous commercial machines have 256 GB SSD drives and HDD may be optional.

On my own ThinkPad working machine here:

USERS is 20GB; Program Files and PF (x86) is 23GB; Program Data is 9GB; Windows including WinSXS is 25GB for a total of 77GB.

I have another desktop with lots of photos and USERS is 40Gb - Photos being the difference.

So you can happily run Windows on a 256GB SSD and then (only if necessary) isolate Photos, Videos, and very large files to non-USERS folders and put those on your HDD.

Working as above, there is no need to move USERS to a different drive - this won't readily work anyway (95%).

The best result I have found over the years (<100GB for XP back to DOS) is a 1TB or larger SSD drive for C: . I used 500GB for years and 1TB just makes life easier.

The short answer is probably no. You already have linked the other possibilities to move some or all the user's Folders to another drive with the registry, hard links, etc...

I tried some simpler things once I had a smaller SSD built into my pc but then I had to account for many problems for example using normal links instead of hard links, changing the environment variable etc...

There are multiple ways a program can use the user folder, so to have no problems further you'll have to for almost all of them or buy yourself a bigger SSD.

I just made folders Documents and Downloads on my D drive. Then, when you have saved a .txt or .png, .xlsx, etc. to either folder, the next one will automatically attempt to save to the same location as your last save. I am not taking my brand new laptop apart to replace my SSD with a larger SSD because it is still under warranty and I'm not adding an external drive. I hate having things dangle off the side. This works very well for me. And, of course, you can add subfolders under Documents and Downloads just as you would on the C drive. You can also add videos, pictures, music, or any folder name that you want. My computer Setup

I also have applications/programs install to my D drive. My SSD is only 128 GB because I opted to get a great computer with all of the other features I wanted without spending thousands of dollars. My HDD is 1 TB. So, my laptop is very fast and graphics ready without spending too much. Most SSDs wear out more quickly than HDDs anyway. To buy one that lasts longer, you have to spend a lot. I have it all working the way I like.