Question regarding the program files folder in XP
 

Hey dudes. So after my little fiasco with my computer, I decided to partition my harddrive into a SYSTEM drive and a DATA drive. This way the system partition won't get defragged. And if it screws up, I won't have to worry about taking my harddrive out and copying files to a friend's system. I can just format the system partition... But enough about that - does anyone know how I can move the program files folder from the default partition to the other? I could just sorta make a new folder on the D: drive, but lots of stuff by default sticks stuff into C:\Program Files. I found an article on the MS knowledge base for transferring My Documents... just gotta handles the other folder.
-Kev

Is it really that hard to replace C with D when u install something?

i've always used a 2-3GB C: drive just for the OS and then a D: drive for everything else, really nice when u put the fsb to high for the hard drive and your OS data gets scrambled.

In my experience, it usually is.

When a program is installed, it makes a few entries in a file of its own, and it is different for every program. Some of those files are accessible, some are not.

Also, during the installation process, not all files are installed in the destination directory. Some files are copied to \Windows\system, some files are copied to \Windows and some are copied to other program directories under \Program Files.

And I won't even bring up the registry...

In short, it's just not possible to easily move a program from one drive to another. (unless it's a simple game!)

So the best way to setup a system like that, is to create a partition for the OS (drive C), a partition for the programs, and another for a backup of drive C.

Backup often. You can also backup on CD-R or CD-RW, as an alternative.

I like to create another partition for data, the actual files that I'm working with, just because it's easier and simpler to backup all of it. Most of the times, I just tell people to keep everything under one folder, like "My Documents" (with whatever directory structure they want).

When you create a partition for the OS, make sure you leave enough room for the swap file...

This is how you do the MyDocuments folder... but I don't know how to do the program files folder.....

Install TweakUI for XP (look up powertoys on MS's site) and then run tweakui, in it there will be a box for "My Computer" -> then "speical folders" you can change the path for all folders.


BTW, one nice thing to do, is once you get your system side setup, use Norton Ghost to create an image of that partition. Then, if it ever screws up, it's ALOT faster to restore a partition image than it is to reinstall it fresh.

Ghost your image onto a CD.