Relocating the "users" root directory

[Guest]

I have seen this question asked (and misunderstood) in a number of places,
however, I have yet to see a sensible solution.

I suspect like many other people, I have a smallish disk (40GB) for the OS,
and a largish (1TB in my case) disk for data etc.

The user location in Vista defaults to C:\users\<username>.

I have currently 3 users on my machine, and intend to add at least another
3. I want to store user data on my large data drive (D.

I know, that I can use the location tab, on most of the directories, to
change the location of, and copy the files to, D:\users\<username>, however,
for half a dozen users, that is a long process, and there has to be a "better
way"

I have tried setting a homepath to d:\users\<username> but that doesn't
work. I know that I could probably set a batch file, to SET the %USERPROFILE%
string for each user on startup, however, that seems a somewhat retrograde
step.

I have had a look in the registry - there is a key which is at:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList

with a value of : %SystemDrive%\Users

Has anyone tried changing this (and the other associated keys at this
location)?

 

[**__MIke__**]

I move the desktop, documents, and favorites to E:\System Folders\xxx. I
used to do it by hand, but with all the reinstalls with different versions
of Vista I exported a .reg file. The key is below. The location of the other
user folders in the same area of the registry, so you change more if you
like, also note that "my documents" is now "personal". My motivation for
this method is twofold: I dual boot an this way my desktop, favorites, and
documents are the same in different operating systems, plus I restore with
Ghost a lot and this way these folders remain unchanged in a
estoration. --Mike

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User
Shell Folders]

P.S. you need to be logged in as the user you want to change when you edit
the registry. There's more about doing it in XP here, and my experience has
been that stuff like this for XP also applys to Vista.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314843/

 

[Guest]

Ian,

I asked this previously with little response. Let me know if your or Mike's
solution works.

-Tom

 

[Alexander Suhovey]

I have seen this question asked (and misunderstood) in a number of places,
however, I have yet to see a sensible solution.

I suspect like many other people, I have a smallish disk (40GB) for the
OS,
and a largish (1TB in my case) disk for data etc.

The user location in Vista defaults to C:\users\<username>.

I have currently 3 users on my machine, and intend to add at least another
3. I want to store user data on my large data drive (D.

You could do that by mounting a volume that has D: letter assigned to
"c:\Users" folder. Another trick I've seen is to use new symlik feature to
accomplish same goal.

http://www.hanselman.com/blog/CategoryView.aspx?category=Longhorn

 

[Alexander Suhovey]

Another trick I've seen is to use new symlik feature to accomplish same
goal.

http://www.hanselman.com/blog/CategoryView.aspx?category=Longhorn

Sorry, more accurate link is:
http://www.hanselman.com/blog/MoreOnVistaReparsePoints.aspx