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Summary: Because of the files an installed application usually leaves behind, it's prohibitively difficult move it to another drive.
The short, pragmatic answer to both your questions is no. Let me explain why... • When an application installs, it leaves pointers to all sorts of files and such that it cares about in various places including the system registry and quite possibly files and locations known only to that application. There's no way to go in and change all those settings and know that you've gotten them all. So the "right" way to move an application is to uninstall and re-install it to the new location. Be aware that some applications will still install some components to "c:\program files" even if you are installing the full application somewhere else. As for moving Windows' "c:\documents and settings", technically I believe there is a registry setting that defines its location. However, I would be extremely reluctant to change that. My concern is that I fully expect some applications to ignore that setting and always write to "c:\documents and settings" anyway. My suggestion here is to have your video or other application simply use directories that you create on your new drive, thus ignoring the whole "documents and settings" thing all together. Related:
Article 486 | Posted November 16, 2004 |
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get Tweak UI (free, part of the microsoft powertoys). you can specify anything youi want to be your my documents, my music, etc. along with a host of other little tweaks
Posted by: jimbo at June 30, 2005 12:28 PMfree alternative to iolo.com
http://www.funduc.com/app_mover.htm
Posted by: Shaun Lloyd at August 2, 2005 12:07 AMFollow the instructions at this link: http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Features/intelmatrixich6r/5.html
Posted by: scottyfree at December 11, 2005 08:43 AMThis works just fine even if you don't have a RAID array. If you have questions, Terren Tong, the author will get back to you if you e-mail him. I've done this several times on different XP installs and it is pretty easy.
To move My documents to anther drive , just right click on the icon My documents on the desktop and change the destination, it will automatically create a Document and setting folder on your new drive.
Posted by: Zaheed Ahmed at December 21, 2005 03:08 AMmost of the software solutions to relocating applications seem to be focused on moving the applications within the same system, like from drive C: to D:. Specifically, I am interested in moving applications from one system with an OS installed, to another system with an OS installed. Without reinstalling the applications on the new system, and retaining the program settings, can this be done??????
I have seen system mechanic mentioned above by Iolo, and yes it's a wonderful tool indeed, but, it also is mereley changing the location of the program within the same machine like a directory or drive change. It is still going to edit the same registry and not the registry of another system running a different registry, am I correct?
As for the people merely wanting to change the default location of the my documents folder....select the properties of the my documents icon on the desktop and you will find a TARGET location which you may change to whatever location you like.
Posted by: Doctor Fishbone at May 16, 2006 04:42 PMwhat about using a program like magic mover or PC relocator, that will move all links and registry additions.
Posted by: Mike Hunt at August 10, 2006 02:19 PMYou make it sound like its an impossible task, when in fact theres some software that will do it in as easy as 3 steps.
I uninstalled my "Kodak Easyshare" software that was originally on drive c: as I wanted to move it to drive f:, my new drive... However when I went to install it now on drive f: it automatically installed it on the c: drive again, not even giving me an option to choose where I wanted it!!! I gues I shouldn't just "drag" it over to the other drive? this will probably mess some settings up???
Posted by: Pam at October 18, 2006 02:09 PMI see a lot of people here confusing "My Documents" and "Documents and Settings" - one is the parent dir for ALL profiles and one is a subdirectory of one profile - there is a huge difference. Without using an unattend.txt or similar (ie use nLite to install XP) then it is not possible (Well there is meant to be a way but it is very convoluted and a bugger to get working, and it doesn't seem 100% reliable) to move the docs and settings (where ALL profiles / app data goes) - it is only possble to move individual profiles to another location.
The same is possible with vista (Move the Users dir at install time).
And yes, you are right that some things are (wrongly) hard-coded to use C:\documents and settings regardless of whether your D+S dir is on C:. The simple way around that is to create a symlink on C: to point to your D+S on D:.
I use this setup exclusively along with GHOST. If my OS dies, I can re-flash my C: with a backed up image and not even have to worry about my profile data (eg outlook mail / favorites / my docs etc) being lost.
Posted by: Clive Galway at July 2, 2007 11:55 AMI have a imac g5 and it is moving EXTREMELY slow and/or applications constantly quit. My ex-husband loaded all my applications on my computer and has the disc and/or registration codes for all the apps. I have over $10,000 of applications and plug-ins for the applications on the computer and am not looking to pay that again. However, I NEED an upgraded system. Is it possible to either move the files to another hard drive or maybe even extract the internal hard drive and install it in a new computer? I don't know but I am open to any possibilities!
Posted by: luanna at July 31, 2007 09:07 PMWindows got corrupted on hard drive. installed new hard drive as primary. I backed up outlook to a .pst file and installed on the new hard drive. This drive failed in 2 weeks and I did not backup THAT 2 weels worth of emails. I can still access the origianl drive as a secondary drive. Is there a way to retrieve email from the secondary drive that was in use for 2 weeks?
Posted by: Eric Vasiliades at August 22, 2007 05:20 PM