Having said A...

[alexpgp]

I got my hands on a Windows 7 notebook that's pretty compact (Acer 1410) and decided to do what I stopped doing a few machines ago, and that's to partition the 160 GB drive and keep Windows and program files on one partition, and data (documents, media, etc.) on another.

Having accomplished that feat, it occurred to me that there was no easy way to cause the directory tree created for my username to actually reside on the other (non-system) disk. Most of the solutions I saw online were overly complex and piled high with "don't blame me if you screw up your setup" warnings. Finally, after reading about a half-dozen articles, I essayed a solution:

First, as user "fred" I opened a cmd box by right-clicking on the cmd icon in the Start menu and selecting "Run as Administrator." I then activated the Administrator's account and created a password - farblegarg - for the Administrator by invoking

C:\Users> net user administrator /active:yes
C:\Users> net user administrator farblegarg

Then I copied the entire directory tree associated with fred to the D: drive

C:\Users> robocopy fred d:\fred /mir /xj

The two additional parameters specify that the directory structure is to be mirrored (/mir) and that junction points not be followed (/xj).

The next step is to delete the fred directory from C:\Users and then invoke

C:\Users> mklink fred d:\fred

What this does is create a so-called junction in the directory that points to the files on the D: drive.

Basically, what that means is that as far as Windows is concerned, when fred logs in, all of his files will appear to reside on the system drive (C:), but will actually be stored on the data drive (D:).

...and if all I've said, Brigid, doesn't mean anything to you, then forget it and we'll make it just this: We'll always have Pismo Beach!

Oops! I must be having a movie flashback, channeling Bogie and Bugs!

Cheers...

P.S. This post has been brought to you by the letter B, which has been avoiding being said, to no avail.

Comments

[bandicoot.livejournal.com]

I don't understand why you'd partition a modern, fast drive. Partitions just overly complicate things as far as I can tell.

I keep all my data in several folders (and their subfolder trees) on the desktop, which makes them very easy to keep backed up.

[bdunbar.livejournal.com]

At work we partition our servers to allow us to reinstall the operating system without worrying about zapping data on the larger logical drive.

I'd assume the same would be true of windows on the desktop?

[alexpgp.livejournal.com]

There's that, but - and this may just be saying the same thing - if I'm careful about where applications store data, I can copy just the D: drive and be confident I have all my data, either for backup or travel purposes.

Cheers...

[bdunbar.livejournal.com]

Ah, junctions are finally working in Windows: I'd forgotten about those. I looked at that a year or four back to solve a problem at work - but getting them up and running on server 2003 was (IIRC) tricky.

I'll have to take a look at that when we start using Server 2008.