Moving your personal documents to a location other than the system partition is a good idea for several reasons. Namely, if your system crashes, you can format and reinstall Windows without affecting your personal files or requiring you to move them to another location. Of course, this does not work if the entire drive crashes and takes your personal files with it!
Follow these steps (D: is the name of my location, change it to match yours):
- Backup your C:Users folder to an external location
- Boot from Windows Vista install DVD
- Click “Repair” from main install screen
- Click Command Prompt
- robocopy C:Users D:Users /mir /xj
- rmdir /S /Q C:Users
- rmdir “C:Documents and Settings”
- mklink /J C:Users D:Users
- mklink /J “C:Documents and Settings” D:Users
- Reboot
You’ll notice that C:Users now has an arrow on its icon designating that it is a link to another location. Remember to set proper permissions and remove read-only status from the new D:Users so all applications work properly!… Read more