Moving Program Files

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Does anyone know of a program (free would be nice) that will successfully moving an installed application from one disk partition to a different one on the same hard drive? I am running out of space in one partition (C = 4% free) and I would like to move some applications without a de-install/re-install.

Thanks,

– Al

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I don’t know about moving installed applications – the best solution there, I think, would be to remove and re-install on the target drive. There are too many variables ion a program installation for me to be comfortable moving them – registry values, INI settings, among others.

If space is an issue, Partition Magic will resize the partitions. I recently had a similar crunch on a desktop PC and increased the C: drive space by taking some from a 25GB partition that had a lot of free space. One reboot and two hours later all was well.

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…and talking of Partition Magic, it used to come with a program mover module, but I’m not sure of it still does.

May be worth checking out Powerquest for all the info.

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I have Partition Magic. Hadn’t thought re-partitioning again… I’ll check it out.

Thanks for the help,

– Al

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Another approach is to reconsider using your operating system drive for applications. I strongly suggest using a different drive for applications, and reserving the C drive for the operating system only. This means copying the C:Program Files directory to the application drive, and then, admittedly laboriously, combing through the registry and changing all instances of the former location to the new location. It took me about two hours, but after almost a year, my C drive is holding steady at less than 1 gb. All applications I add install seamlessly and uneventfully to my application drive. I was driven to this by my desire to always have access to DOS, which means my operating system drive must be FAT formatted, cannot exceed 2 gb, and the cluster size is inefficient. However, it has functioned marvelously. If I ever need to repair W2k, I have a full 1 gb headroom, so the repair process never runs out of room. Meanwhile, my application drive (and all other drives) can be as big as I need, and formatted NTFS. Even if you aren’t picky about the size of the C drive, or want to format it as NTFS for better security, having the operating system divorced from the application partition is very useful.

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CaptainCode,

Thanks for your response and I think it’s a good policy. Certainly matches my experience with O/S drives. I’ll most likely implement it when I get an uninterruptible chunk of time on a weekend so I can maintain continuity of thought.

– Al

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There is some additional information that may help. Copy, do not move the Program Files directory to the new drive, and then only delete it from the C drive after you’re sure everything is running OK. If you move the directories covered in the next paragraphs, use the same procedure.

In addition to moving the Program Files directory, I also move the All Users and all personal profiles over to the other drive, so as Outlook Express and MS Office profile directories accumulate files, idiosyncratic templates, cookies, etc., these files don’t take up space on the OS drive (Q214653). For emergencies, however, I do retain a rudimentary Administrator profile on the C drive. In addition, I move the dllcache directory out of the WINNTSystem32 directory, as well as the paging file, and a set of installation files slipstreamed with the latest service pack. That way if SFC objects to a file replacement, it can reference the drive instead of asking for the original media (Q222473).

I also relocate the ServicePackFiles (Q271484) and the Driver Cache (Q230644) directories over to the other drive as well. All of this involves extensive registry editing, so the usual precautions for backup apply. The WinLogon editing (Q222193) for the dllcache is particularly sensitive to syntax; run SFC from a command prompt a few times until you get it right (meaning it doesn’t stop every second or so and ask where a file is, because your registry entry didn’t correctly point to the new location). I also move the paging file to another drive as well.

You may also find it useful to add the recovery console to the C drive so you can start it anytime without the original media, and I suggest using slipstreamed files (Q263125) to compose it, because by default it will only load the files from the original media. Depending on whether you have good physical security to your computer, you may also find it convenient to access your other drives from the console. This is not straightforward; you have to configure an administrative policy (Q240831; the same policy enables AllowAllPaths) ahead of time to allow it, and you will need to run the “set AllowAllPaths = true” command each time in the command console to make the policy effective. However, with so much moved off the c drive, it’s not a bad idea.

BTW, I have an old laptop with a 4 gb hard drive, set with my usual FAT partition for the c drive (NTFS for all others). I set the c drive at 1 gb, improving the cluster size to 16 kb instead of 32 kb. By rigorously applying all this, it has been happily running W2k for a full two years now. My desktop (with a 2 gb FAT OS partition) still has, as I write this, 1.2 gb of free space.

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Thanks very much for taking all that time to put this together. It’ll help me a lot, I’m sure.

Al

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RE: For emergencies, however, I do retain a rudimentary Administrator profile on the C drive.

How can you have an administrator profile on C if the All Users folder is set to another drive in
My ComputerHKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindows NTCurrentVersionProfileListProfilesDirectory?

Won’t there be a conflict?

– Al

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