New PC with 2 Hard drives (1 SSD and 1x SATA) - windows & user folder on SSD drive ?

Andy From Sligo

God I am stuck on this one / Stumped can anyone offer any help...

New Dell desktop PC with windows 10 professional 64bit.

It has 2 Drives in it - a 130GB solid State Drive and a 1tb SATA HDD (mechanical)

DELL have (helpfully?) configured Win 10 OS on the SSD Drive - and so Users folder lives on that C:\ Drive of course.

Got to download files from OLD Desktop computer with 500GB SATA - Try copying over USER Data (pics/vids/docs etc) from Old Hard drive to new SATA in the new Dell Desktop and of course Windows reporting not enough disk space to carry out operation - cannot shrink any hard disk space from D partition and EXTEND C: partition because they are 2 seperate hard drives (1 SSD + 1 HDD mechanical)

any ideas what to do ? - right headache!

Of course I could make a users folder on the mechanical 1TB HDD but then when I go to start menu and choose personal folder it is going to look for User Folder (and the files) on C: Drive partition

Any ideas what to do in this situation please?

I would have like them (DELL) to put 1TB HDD as the C:/ drive and the SSD as D .. but obviously they have put OS and Users file on SSD for speed etc

Thank you.

PS obviously no media (win 10) Dell supply so if I wanted to configure myself the 1TB as c: partition instead of D partition I could download Win 10 64bit Professional as ISO and configure 1TB as primary HDD but then what when it comes to activating?

smuggler.ie

Activation would be fine, but moving OS to HDD defeat purpose of having SSD - don't do it.


You could do folder redirection. As sample:
On left pane in File Explorer expand This PC,(1) Right click Documents and select(2)Properties. Go to (3)Location tab, click (4)change target directory C:\Users\Username\Documents to \Docs, click (5)Apply, confirm to create folder, confirm to move all files. Once move is completed Documents folder will appear under This PC same way as it was, but will open on HDD. Documents folder will be gone from C:\Users\username\
Do this to each of your folders(Desktop, Documents, Downloads, Music, Video, Pictures).


Note: Newly created folders on \ must to have unique names on drive.

Note: Ensure you redirect to sub-folder(D:\Docs, \Mus, etc.), never redirect to root(D:\).

Note: by default browsers have "Download" folder set to go to C:\Users\Username\Downloads and it should recognize the move, if not, you might need manually change location in browser settings.

Note: sample given for one user setup, other users(if any or created later) still have default directories. Other users will have access to your folders on drive unless you modify permissions. If more than one user - add directory depth(D:\User1\Docs, \User1\Mus, \User2\Docs, \User2\Mus, etc.) and change permissions for each user.

Side effect - you might feel some latency accessing your documents
Proceed with caution. If completed correctly, this can be reverted if needed.

CatInABox

Andy From Sligo wrote: »

God I am stuck on this one / Stumped can anyone offer any help...

New Dell desktop PC with windows 10 professional 64bit.

It has 2 Drives in it - a 130GB solid State Drive and a 1tb SATA HDD (mechanical)

DELL have (helpfully?) configured Win 10 OS on the SSD Drive - and so Users folder lives on that C:\ Drive of course.

Got to download files from OLD Desktop computer with 500GB SATA - Try copying over USER Data (pics/vids/docs etc) from Old Hard drive to new SATA in the new Dell Desktop and of course Windows reporting not enough disk space to carry out operation - cannot shrink any hard disk space from D partition and EXTEND C: partition because they are 2 seperate hard drives (1 SSD + 1 HDD mechanical)

any ideas what to do ? - right headache!

Of course I could make a users folder on the mechanical 1TB HDD but then when I go to start menu and choose personal folder it is going to look for User Folder (and the files) on C: Drive partition

Any ideas what to do in this situation please?

I would have like them (DELL) to put 1TB HDD as the C:/ drive and the SSD as D .. but obviously they have put OS and Users file on SSD for speed etc

Thank you.

PS obviously no media (win 10) Dell supply so if I wanted to configure myself the 1TB as c: partition instead of D partition I could download Win 10 64bit Professional as ISO and configure 1TB as primary HDD but then what when it comes to activating?

Go into explorer, then right click the folder you want to move (Downloads/Documents/Etc).

Click "Properties", then "location", then "Move". Select the D drive and set up the folder there.


Dell definitely did the right thing there by putting the OS on the SSD, it'll zip along there, while it'd trudge along on the HDD. Moving the User folder is something that they shouldn't do either, if people aren't aware of it, it may cause problem when it comes to deleting data, removing the drive, etc.

Andy From Sligo

Brilliant, thanks both for taking the time to answer and explain in a detailed way I shall give that a go today and see how it goes
Many thanks.

Just to confirm, I will be moving the user folder and it's contents right off drive c: onto drive D (1tb) doing it using suggestions and windows will still boot ok without a user's folder on drive c: ?

smuggler.ie

Andy From Sligo wrote: »

Brilliant, thanks both for taking the time to answer and explain in a detailed way I shall give that a go today and see how it goes
Many thanks.

Just to confirm, I will be moving the user folder and it's contents right off drive c: onto drive D (1tb) doing it using suggestions and windows will still boot ok without a user's folder on drive c: ?

Yes, you will be redirecting libraries only.

Andy From Sligo

smuggler.ie wrote: »

Yes, you will be redirecting libraries only.

Great thanks a mil

Andy From Sligo

Everything went fine except for you know the user profile you can add to the start menu in Windows 10 well the documents, pictures , music and videos don't show in that one which is strange but I have added a profile icon on the desktop and that shows them folders . Wonder what is going on there? - maybe the one in the start menu just looks for folders in the C: drive user's folder?

smuggler.ie

Andy From Sligo wrote: »

Everything went fine except for you know the user profile you can add to the start menu in Windows 10 well the documents, pictures , music and videos don't show in that one which is strange but I have added a profile icon on the desktop and that shows them folders . Wonder what is going on there? - maybe the one in the start menu just looks for folders in the C: drive user's folder?

Not certain what you mean. You can Pin to Start any folder. Same folders available from various location.

If you Pin to Start your user folder - obvious these folders not there as you have them moved. If that is the way you want to access them - add shortcuts to that user folder:
In File explorer navigate to C:\Users\User1, right click on empty space, select New, then select Shortcut, Browse... - navigate to folder location(or type \Docs), then Next, name your shortcut, Finish.

Andy From Sligo

smuggler.ie wrote: »

Not certain what you mean. You can Pin to Start any folder. Same folders available from various location.

If you Pin to Start your user folder - obvious these folders not there as you have them moved. If that is the way you want to access them - add shortcuts to that user folder:
In File explorer navigate to C:\Users\User1, right click on empty space, select New, then select Shortcut, Browse... - navigate to folder location(or type \Docs), then Next, name your shortcut, Finish.

Thanks. No, what I mean is you know you can go into settings in windows 10 and then 'choose what to display on start menu' and by default some folders/links are missing on start menu but you can add them in settings (like photos documents network personal folder etc..) - well i told it to show personal folder in the start menu and that was the one where when you click on it it couldnt fathom the moved folders of documents pictures videos etc were on the drive - the 'personal folder' I added to the desktop (themes - add icons to the desktop) works as it should and shows you all the folders. Strange how it works. I will have to see if there is a right click on the personal folder (on the left of the start menu) and see if it pops up a properties menu where I can change the shortcut to point it to the drive where the pics / vids / docs folders have moved instead of linking to C: users folder instead

smuggler.ie

Andy From Sligo wrote: »

Thanks. No, what I mean is you know you can go into settings in windows 10 and then 'choose what to display on start menu' and by default some folders/links are missing on start menu but you can add them in settings (like photos documents network personal folder etc..) - well i told it to show personal folder in the start menu and that was the one where when you click on it it couldnt fathom the moved folders of documents pictures videos etc were on the drive - the 'personal folder' I added to the desktop (themes - add icons to the desktop) works as it should and shows you all the folders. Strange how it works. I will have to see if there is a right click on the personal folder (on the left of the start menu) and see if it pops up a properties menu where I can change the shortcut to point it to the drive where the pics / vids / docs folders have moved instead of linking to C: users folder instead

I see what you mean.

All work fine for me. Try Restart PC