Comments for Can I move an installed application to another drive?

Comment from Eric Vasiliades on 2007-08-22

2007-08-23T00:20:11Z

Windows 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?

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Comment from luanna on 2007-07-31

2007-08-01T04:07:07Z

I 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!

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Comment from Clive Galway on 2007-07-02

2007-07-02T18:55:12Z

I 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.

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Comment from Pam on 2006-10-18

2006-10-18T21:09:51Z

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???

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Comment from Mike Hunt on 2006-08-10

2006-08-10T21:19:21Z

what about using a program like magic mover or PC relocator, that will move all links and registry additions.
You make it sound like its an impossible task, when in fact theres some software that will do it in as easy as 3 steps.

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Comment from Doctor Fishbone on 2006-05-16

2006-05-16T23:42:08Z

most 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.

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Comment from Zaheed Ahmed on 2005-12-21

2005-12-21T11:08:18Z

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.

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Comment from scottyfree on 2005-12-11

2005-12-11T16:43:07Z

Follow the instructions at this link: http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Features/intelmatrixich6r/5.html
This 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.

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Comment from Shaun Lloyd on 2005-08-02

2005-08-02T07:07:20Z

free alternative to iolo.com

http://www.funduc.com/app_mover.htm

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Comment from jimbo on 2005-06-30

2005-06-30T19:28:14Z

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

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Comment from A Nonymous on 2005-04-27

2005-04-27T19:29:08Z

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q236621/

As they say in the classics: "RTFM"...

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A comment on: Can I move an installed application to another drive?

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Comment from Matthew D. Walker on 2005-04-04

2005-04-05T06:16:48Z

I have Documents and Settings on a second drive- I wish I could remember exactly how I did it, but in terms of moving it, I seem to remember that it was a no go, however you can set it up that way during the install process. I do remember doing something along the lines of installing normally on C:, then adding an unattend file to drive D: (I think you can use a floppy for this), reinstalling windows using the unattend which specifies the location of documents and settings. I'm about to reformat my whole system and once I get this working again that way I'll report back here on exactly how I did it.

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A comment on: Can I move an installed application to another drive?

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Comment from Leo on 2005-02-28

2005-02-28T17:57:38Z

In general you cannot. (There may be hacks, but I don't trust them not to impact the system in other ways.)

The general solution is to examine the application you're using and seeing if you can tell it to use some other directory as its default data directory.

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A comment on: Can I move an installed application to another drive?

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Comment from Carole on 2005-02-28

2005-02-28T17:47:47Z

How can i move the folder "documents and settings" to a another drive (D)?

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Comment from awilliams on 2004-12-22

2004-12-23T05:33:14Z

quite the contrary, I have found an excellent application that makes moving applications from one location to another, including registry entries and shortcuts, does, in fact, exist. http://www.iolo.com.
Granted this process takes a long time depending on the size of your harddrive from which you're moving the application because iolo's application scans the whole drive for registry entries, the application to be moved and shortcuts. Ultimately, it works and the wait is shorter than reinstalling.

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A comment on: Can I move an installed application to another drive?

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Comment from old hobo on 2004-12-13

2004-12-14T00:32:48Z

There is one program I know of , and it works although there are some programs it doesn't work on so read it's faq. It is called "application mover"
It really helped me.

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Comment from Brent Dax on 2004-11-24

2004-11-24T20:05:43Z

Oops, the link disappeared--it was supposed to be http://support.microsoft.com/kb/205524 .

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Comment from Brent Dax on 2004-11-24

2004-11-24T20:03:30Z

If your drives are both formatted NTFS, Windows XP (and presumably 2000 too) allows you to mount the second drive onto an empty folder, Unix-style--i.e. when you access C:\Mounted Drive, you're really accessing D:\. This functionality is available through the Logical Disk Manager--just right-click on the volume you want to mount and select "Change Drive Letters and Paths" (or something like that). There's also a set of command-line tools discussed in .

Taking advantage of this is a bit tricky. I would probably do the following for a system with only one (large) user account:

0. Make a complete backup! This procedure is completely untested!
1. Boot into Safe Mode and log in as a different administrator account than the one you want to use. (Make sure it's an Administrator, of course!)
2. Rename the folder that houses your primary user profile to, say, Temp.
3. Create an empty folder with the same name the folder you just renamed had.
4. Use the Disk Manager to mount the new volume onto the empty folder.
5. Move the contents of your profile into the now-mounted folder.
6. Reboot and try it out.

If you have multiple large profiles, I'm not sure what you should do; one option is using the linkd.exe command-line tool to create junction points for each My Documents folder that pop out on the new drive. (A junction point is very similar to a Unix symbolic link.)

(Oh, and if you test the procedure above and it works, let me know--I may be getting a new hard drive as a present this year. ;^) )

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Comment from Roy Bonner on 2004-11-21

2004-11-21T20:24:47Z

Regarding moving programs from one drive to another, PowerQuest release a utility with their Partition Magic software which happily transports all but the most recalcitrant program installs to another drive quite successfully.
I did for a while use a separate drive for installing programs, it only requires a single item to be changed in the registry, and works without problem, but then the normal windows accessories that install with windows start to get screwed up as they try to move themselves to the new location and wind up split between the two, I therefore saw no advantage to it and went back to the standard location.
The Documents and settings is a different kettle of fish altogether! It really isn't worth the hassle of trying to move the whole thing, but the My Documents folder with all it's subfolders can be moved anywhere you want simply by right click, drag and select Move to. If you have more than one Documents folder in XP or whatever, you do have to put each one into a named folder to keep them separate. It does make good sense I think to keep data files well away from potential dangers, likewise does it also make sense to keep such dangers well away from Windows! We must all be aware of the perennial problem where you need to repair or re-install windows every few months because it has started getting flaky. Well, it's actually a relatively easy fix as I have proved over a number of years, the average age of a windows installation without major repairs can easily be three years or more. A separate data drive (logical is fine), a separate logical drive of 5Gb or so for the windows swap file

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A comment on: Can I move an installed application to another drive?

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