move profiles documents and settings folder to larger drive

I have four dell poweredge servers, each with the same general problem, the
system drive is configured too small, such that it too quickly ran out of
space.

With all four, upon first receipt, I moved the program files directory to
the larger drive (doesn't stop the common files folder from growing, but
helps). On two of the boxes, into which few logins had occurred, I
painstakingly went through the registry, moving the "documents and settings"
references to the larger drive. They both function perfectly, and have no
"d and s" folder on their respective drives. On the other two, which have
far more profiles, I ran into difficulties and decided against the registry
style move, opting instead for a junction point approach, but on a user
level. This was equally problematic, (started getting user.domain profile
folders, etc.), and I ultimately reverted that change

What I would like to do is simply have the "documents and settings" folder
to be non-existent on the system drive, but be on a drive ("D" in this case)
of my choice.

Is there a "simple" way to accomplish this? Even if it is necessary to use
a third party product.

Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

Stuart
sharden capitolimpact.net

missing noun: They both function perfectly, and have no "d and s" folder on
their respective "C/system" drives.

"Stuart Harden" <StuartHarden@TulaneAlumni.net> wrote in message
news:ewU65n3hHHA.4516@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...
>I have four dell poweredge servers, each with the same general problem, the
>system drive is configured too small, such that it too quickly ran out of
>space.
>
> With all four, upon first receipt, I moved the program files directory to
> the larger drive (doesn't stop the common files folder from growing, but
> helps). On two of the boxes, into which few logins had occurred, I
> painstakingly went through the registry, moving the "documents and
> settings" references to the larger drive. They both function perfectly,
> and have no "d and s" folder on their respective drives. On the other
> two, which have far more profiles, I ran into difficulties and decided
> against the registry style move, opting instead for a junction point
> approach, but on a user level. This was equally problematic, (started
> getting user.domain profile folders, etc.), and I ultimately reverted that
> change
>
> What I would like to do is simply have the "documents and settings" folder
> to be non-existent on the system drive, but be on a drive ("D" in this
> case) of my choice.
>
> Is there a "simple" way to accomplish this? Even if it is necessary to
> use a third party product.
>
> Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.
>
> Stuart
> sharden capitolimpact.net
>

"Stuart Harden" <StuartHarden@TulaneAlumni.net> wrote in message
news:ewU65n3hHHA.4516@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...
> I have four dell poweredge servers, each with the same general problem,
the
> system drive is configured too small, such that it too quickly ran out of
> space.
>
> With all four, upon first receipt, I moved the program files directory to
> the larger drive (doesn't stop the common files folder from growing, but
> helps). On two of the boxes, into which few logins had occurred, I
> painstakingly went through the registry, moving the "documents and
settings"
> references to the larger drive. They both function perfectly, and have no
> "d and s" folder on their respective drives. On the other two, which have
> far more profiles, I ran into difficulties and decided against the
registry
> style move, opting instead for a junction point approach, but on a user
> level. This was equally problematic, (started getting user.domain profile
> folders, etc.), and I ultimately reverted that change
>
> What I would like to do is simply have the "documents and settings" folder
> to be non-existent on the system drive, but be on a drive ("D" in this
case)
> of my choice.
>
> Is there a "simple" way to accomplish this? Even if it is necessary to
use
> a third party product.
>
> Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.
>
> Stuart
> sharden capitolimpact.net
>
>

By far the simplest and most robust method would be to increase
the size of your system partitions to a value that will be adequate
for the life expectancy of the machines. Everything else is problematic
and is unlikely to survive the test of time. You could do this
automatically with a partition manager or manually with a Bart
PE CD + some cloning commands.

I have not tried what you want to do and it appears to be unsupported:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/236621.
I can't honestly see why you would need to do it. The System Drive is
usually too small (assuming you built it with a reasonable size like min
8Gb, preferably 12Gb) for one of the following reasons:
- Users profiles too large: solution, Redirect profile folders elsewhere
- Pagefile: solution, move to another drive
- SQL: solution, move log files and databases to another drive
- Large applications, like Office, Sun etc: solution, install on a different
drive
You can usually get by even with 4Gb with these changes. I can only see a
problem if your system drive was just built too small. Then you may have to
consider rebuilding or expanding the system drive.
Anthony
http://www.airdesk.co.uk



"Stuart Harden" <StuartHarden@TulaneAlumni.net> wrote in message
news:ewU65n3hHHA.4516@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...
>I have four dell poweredge servers, each with the same general problem, the
>system drive is configured too small, such that it too quickly ran out of
>space.
>
> With all four, upon first receipt, I moved the program files directory to
> the larger drive (doesn't stop the common files folder from growing, but
> helps). On two of the boxes, into which few logins had occurred, I
> painstakingly went through the registry, moving the "documents and
> settings" references to the larger drive. They both function perfectly,
> and have no "d and s" folder on their respective drives. On the other
> two, which have far more profiles, I ran into difficulties and decided
> against the registry style move, opting instead for a junction point
> approach, but on a user level. This was equally problematic, (started
> getting user.domain profile folders, etc.), and I ultimately reverted that
> change
>
> What I would like to do is simply have the "documents and settings" folder
> to be non-existent on the system drive, but be on a drive ("D" in this
> case) of my choice.
>
> Is there a "simple" way to accomplish this? Even if it is necessary to
> use a third party product.
>
> Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.
>
> Stuart
> sharden capitolimpact.net
>

On 2007-04-25, Stuart Harden <StuartHarden@TulaneAlumni.net> wrote:
> I have four dell poweredge servers, each with the same general problem, the
> system drive is configured too small, such that it too quickly ran out of
> space.
>
> With all four, upon first receipt, I moved the program files directory to
> the larger drive (doesn't stop the common files folder from growing, but
> helps). On two of the boxes, into which few logins had occurred, I
> painstakingly went through the registry, moving the "documents and settings"
> references to the larger drive. They both function perfectly, and have no
> "d and s" folder on their respective drives. On the other two, which have
> far more profiles, I ran into difficulties and decided against the registry
> style move, opting instead for a junction point approach, but on a user
> level. This was equally problematic, (started getting user.domain profile
> folders, etc.), and I ultimately reverted that change
>
> What I would like to do is simply have the "documents and settings" folder
> to be non-existent on the system drive, but be on a drive ("D" in this case)
> of my choice.
>
> Is there a "simple" way to accomplish this? Even if it is necessary to use
> a third party product.
>
> Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.
>
> Stuart
> sharden capitolimpact.net
>
>

Try: http://www.dynode.net/~rjw/

- Russell

--
http://www.dynode.net/~rjw/

Thanks much for the responses.

Looking into retroactively increasing the system drive, in accordance with
my RAID configurations, and appreciate the document simplifying what has
previously been a find and replace methodology for these registry edits.

Regards-

Stuart