How do I easily move my Documents folder to a different drive?

Question

My windows 10 installation got hosed during an update. I've installed a new SSD drive and reinstalled Windows 10 from scratch. My old hard drive is still attached to my computer and I'd like to use it for Documents, Downloads. etc. to save space on the SSD.

I've followed the instructions to move the location of the Documents folder but I keep getting a message that it can't move the folder because there is already in the same location that can't be redirected. I've tried unlinking OneDrive but it didn't help.

How do I easily change the location of the Documents folder? (why does this have to be so difficult?)

Answer 1

To move the user shell folder to a different drive you need to right-click the user shell folder > Properties > Location tab > select the folder which will allocate that folder (not the drive). If this is not working, you need to do it on the registry.

Create the folder you want to move on the other disk, (Documents, Pictures)

On the Start Menu type regedit and press enter.

On the Registry editor go to this key (you can copy and paste on the address bar):

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders

You will see these values in the image below:

Double-click and change the values circled in green to change the Documents folder location. (Use the location of the folder you created before)

E.g.: D:\Documents

Double-click and change the values circle in red to change the Pictures folder location. (Use the location of the folder you created before)

E.g.: D:\Pictures

After the procedure, you need to manually move the files to the new location, restart the computer to apply the changes in the registry.

Answer 2

It's ok As long that the hard drive that you are going to disable is not the drive where the windows is installed.

Answer 3

Can you provide step by step instructions on how to perform an in-place upgrade from a DVD installation disk without having the other drives connected?

I've disabled all the drives on my computer except the SSD drive with the latest installation of Windows is and my DVD ROM drive.

If I try to do a Windows installation from the DVD ROM it tells me the upgrade option isn't available using installation media. I need to remove the installation media and restart my computer and then install the media and run setup. But my computer won't boot without the installation media unless I connect the old hard drive which is the cause of the boot problems in the first place.

I tried doing a Repair but it says it can't.

Answer 4

As far as I know, you can't use the DVD installation media to do an in-place upgrade repair. You can only use the Media creation tool or the Windows 10 ISO for this. The DVD installer can only be used to clean and install Windows.

The other option that I see here is to perform a factory reset on the system while keeping your files. You can follow the steps from this link.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/giv...

Answer 5

The system wouldn't let me do a factory reset. I gave up and did another clean install of Windows 10 with all the drives disconnected other than the target SSD drive and the DVDROM drive. Windows now boots without the old drives connected. I reconnected the old drives and they are recognized in Windows. I manually created a Restore Point in this configuration.

I want to format the old drive to remove the old OS from it to prevent problems in the future. Disk Manager won't let me do it. I also tried using the DiskPart Override parameter from Command prompt as an administrator and it still wouldn't let me do it.

How do I format this drive to remove the old OS?

Also, even though I thought did a clean install on the SSD all my old data folders were still on the drive after the install. I'm happy about this but I would have expected them to be wiped.