SOLVED How to point "Desktop" to D-Data drive from current C-Program drive?

[JDD]

Hi,

I just got a new pc for my wife with two (2) 256GB Program SSD's,
two (2) 1-TB Data SSD's all done up in a RAID config and Windows 7 Pro.

Her old Win10 pc has one (1) 256GB SSD Program drive and
one (1) 1-TB HDD Data drive.

I successfully backed up her desktop and data from the old Win10 pc
onto a flash drive & then restored the desktop from the old Win10 pc to the
Desktop folder in Windows Explorer of her new Win7 pc by going to
Windows Explorer > Desktop and pasting the contents of the Win10 pc's Desktop.

I did the same thing for the contents of the Win10 Data drive, pasting the contents
of the Data into the 1-TB SSD (D) drive folder of the new Windows 7 pc.

Now the problem: my wife likes to keep everything on her desktop. This
eventually lead to the Win10 256GB Program drive getting used up.

The old Win10 pc had a trick done by someone not available anymore.

He was able, somehow, to (I think) essentially make the entire desktop
(or maybe each icon on it, as well as all future items) a shortcut to
something on the 1-TB Data D-drive. This freed-up the 256GB SSD
Program drive for programs, only.

Now I need to do the same thing on her new Win7 pc, but I don't know how.

I'm not a real techie, so if someone does know about this, please reply with
exact, detailed, instructions.

Thanks so much!

 

[TrainableMan]

Create a folder on D: such as D:\Desktop.

Then use Windows explorer and go to C:\Users\{yourwifeslogin}\
... To get there you may need to type %userprofile% into Windows Explorers path field & hit enter
Right-click on Desktop (which will be in her folder) & select Properties
Click the Location Tab from the Properties Window
Select MOVE & choose the new D:\Desktop folder

 

[JDD]

@ TrainableMan

Thanks, that looks helpful!

Would anyone advise that I move the ENTIRE user profile folder from its current location in
C:\Users\(username) to the D-drive, instead of just one or two folders in the profile location?

I'm concerned that if I move the entire user profile folder to a new location that things may not work.

Anyone have any experience with this?

With moving the entire user profile to another drive from its default location in C ?

Many thanks!

 

[TrainableMan]

Personally I wouldn't go beyond folders for desktop, downloads, and the libraries: documents, music, pictures & videos.

 

[JDD]

Thanks!

I moved just the Desktop folder to the D-SSD from the C-SSD.

That picked up over 100GB in C.

Thanks for the advice!

 

[TrainableMan]

I'm glad you were able to get it working like you wanted and I marked this thread Solved.

Just an FYI for the future: If you open up Windows Explorer and expand down to C:\Users\{HerLoginID} you can then right-click on the various folders, choose Properties, and the box will show you under General how much room the folder takes. So if you notice a particular folder takes significant space on C: you can always move it to D: .

For example you can see here that I have 205 GB of files in my Downloads folder...