[PCWorld]

Post your comments for Move Your Data to a Safer, Separate Partition in Windows 7 here

[BulldogXX]

Always good to read Lincoln Spector's great advice. There's actually an arcane reason for making all partitions primary -- even a partition that only holds data. It has to do with the ability to recover from a hard disk failure.

A logical partition contains a pointer to the next logical partition; if you need to recover files from a succeeding partition, you're out of luck. A primary partition holds pointers to all other primary partitions; so someone with the right software and the knowledge to use it has a better chance of recovering data from a partition that Windows can no longer see.

[dokcal]

Ironically, I just finished doing this BEFORE the column came out. I stumbled upon the right steps, but I probably would have stumbled less if I'd had Lincoln's instructions!

BTW, I'm using an older version of Outlook (2003), and there was no "mail" listing in the Control Panels section. Had to do some fiddling with both the File|Data File Management and Tools|E-Mail Accounts menu items to get the job done... and THEN I still had to edit all my mail-sorting rules!

[Jhawk23]

Very timely and helpful because today or tomorrow I will be partitioning my new computer. The idea of putting the apps on the drive with the OS is new to me; I had figured to put the OS alone, and apps with their data in a separate partition. Any benefits to the latter? I don't know.

Also I had read that Win 7 creates its own mysterious, hidden recovery file so I guess that's probably "AppData." Handy to know where that is.

[abhiroopb]

I just reformatted my Windows 7 x64 and found this wonderful app called Profile Relocator (http://software.boot...rofilerelocator) that automates the entire process and allows you to move your ENTIRE "Users" folder to a different partition or hard drive.

Abhiroop
TechComet.com

[GeekyScientist]

Will this procedure also work for a network drive instead of a local drive? I have a Raid 1, (mirrored) NAS where I prefer to keep all my files. I have already mapped my folder on it as a drive.

This post has been edited by GeekyScientist: 05 March 2010 - 03:54 PM

[smax013]

GeekyScientist, on 05 March 2010 - 03:52 PM, said:

Will this procedure also work for a network drive instead of a local drive? I have a Raid 1, (mirrored) NAS where I prefer to keep all my files. I have already mapped my folder on it as a drive.

It certainly will for the My Documents folder. That is precisely have I have my system setup with an NAS.

Now, I have not done any such thing with any of the other folders mentioned in the article, but I would expect it would work the same for them as long as your NAS drive has a drive letter associated with it.

[BulldogXX]

One bit of advice I would like to add: Once you've moved your user folders to that new partition, check the ACLs (access control lists) of your user folders to be sure that they have the permissions as you want them to be. After I moved the data folders on my computer to a separate data partition, all users were able to see each others' data. The ACLs appear on the Security tab of the folders' properties.

[userp7pf]

I'm in the process of moving my User's folders from C: to the new drive on a brand new Windows 7 PC. The "My Backup Files" folder has no locations tab under Properties, so how do I move it? Thanks.

[tonybradley]

I used to do this, but actually stopped a while ago. I found once desktop search was developed enough it didn't matter as much where the data was because I am using the Windows search function to find it anyway. But, this article makes some good points about why it makes sense to separate data when it comes to rebuilding or upgrading a PC. I would stress, though, that keeping data in a separate partition is not a replacement for backing it up. Check out this article for some good info on backing data up: http://www.pcworld.c...up_in_2012.html

[polomora]

Nice tips.
However the step to move the AppData/Roaming directory failed with the message
"Folder redirection failed
Failed to build the list of known sub folders
The system cannot find the file specified."

[yodabeesh]

I assume that when you're talking about Apps that you mean the Programs folder? If yes, what do you do about migrating programs to the "other" partition?