Separate users on separate SSD's on the same computer.

Question

To explain what I'm trying to do I need to explain why I'm doing it:

On my PC I have a work user and a personal user, the work user is solely used for work (I work from home) and the personal user is everything else like gaming, messaging etc.

I switch between these users quite frequently and need to be able to do so by switching accounts from the start menu. I use a an external hard drive that I can access from both accounts as a middleman incase I need to access files from both users.

What I want to do is have my work user file on one SSD and my personal user file on a second SSD, is this possible?

I'd imagine just moving the user file over to the second SSD would cause all kinds of chaos.

any suggestions would be hugely helpful. thanks.

Answer 1

Hi Ben,

I am Dave, I will help you with this.

It is a very bad idea to try to move the full User folder to another drive, there is no direct method to do that safely in Windows, you would need to use syn links in Command prompt to achieve that and many people have been unable to log into that user account after trying to do that, because Windows cannot find the NTUser.dat file to load the profile on startup.

You can move the user library folder like Documents, Pictures, Videos, Downloads... etc. to the other drive safely, but that is all.

How to move over a users Library folders to D:

Open Windows File Explorer

In the right hand pane, right click your Documents folder and choose Properties

Select the Location tab

In the Location box, type D:\Documents then click Apply and OK, you must specify a folder location, not just the D drive.

When that move completes, do the same for Pictures, Videos and Music

Each time, provide a new folder location, for example, Pictures will go to D:\Pictures