[SOLVED] Some questions regarding an old HDD in a new pc build

Jan00

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Oct 27, 2014
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Hi everyone! I have been using a HDD (Seagate Barracuda 1TB) with Windows 7 on it for a long time. I was looking for an upgrade of both drives and OS so I bought a new SSD (Gigabyte SSD 240GB) and installed Windows 10 on it. My PC booted without any problems. In the whole process, I unplugged the HDD so it would not be affected.
My HDD also worked perfectly fine after I plugged it into the PC.
Currently, the system recognized the SSD as the C: drive and HDD as the E: drive
My questions are:
a) Is there a way to remove the Windows 7 in the old HDD without formatting it? (as there are a lot of important files and games inside there)
b) Is it possible to set the "Users" file to be located inside the E: drive instead of the C: drive so that it is easier to access the downloads and documents in the file explorer, the programs will save their data into the appdata in E: drive instead of C:drive?

To simplify all these, I want to make SSD as the boot drive and HDD as the only storage drive. I'm looking forward to your help. Thank you in advance.
 
Solution
240gb, but how exactly will it break?
Subsequent WIN 10 updates will be looking for the /Users/ on the C drive.
It is used for much more than just your personal docs.

Even going back to Win 8, this was a bad idea.

You can redirect the Doc/Video/Pictures libraries easily.
Directly in the Windows UI.

Win 7 & 8:
https://forums.tomshardware.com/faq/new-ssd-now-what-redirecting-static-files-elsewhere.1518605/
Win 8.1 & 10:

But the regedit and junction...

Jan00

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Oct 27, 2014
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Okay, I figured out the way to solve b, which is to use either directory junction or regedit, but I still cannot find a clear way to solve the problem a
 

USAFRet

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Okay, I figured out the way to solve b, which is to use either directory junction or regedit, but I still cannot find a clear way to solve the problem a
Do not do that.
This WILL break eventually,

There are easy ways to redirect where your Libraries are located. But don't try to move the whole /Users/ folder to elsewhere.
And trying to do this without reformatting the entire old drive is far more pain than doing it the right way.

What size is this new SSD?
 

Jan00

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Oct 27, 2014
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4,510
Do not do that.
This WILL break eventually,

There are easy ways to redirect where your Libraries are located. But don't try to move the whole /Users/ folder to elsewhere.
And trying to do this without reformatting the entire old drive is far more pain than doing it the right way.

What size is this new SSD?
240gb, but how exactly will it break?
EDIT: I just realized what you mean by moving the folder, moving it won't help either. I am trying to relocate the folders and save location in users, program and program x86 from C: drive to E: drive
 
Last edited:

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
240gb, but how exactly will it break?
Subsequent WIN 10 updates will be looking for the /Users/ on the C drive.
It is used for much more than just your personal docs.

Even going back to Win 8, this was a bad idea.

You can redirect the Doc/Video/Pictures libraries easily.
Directly in the Windows UI.

Win 7 & 8:
https://forums.tomshardware.com/faq/new-ssd-now-what-redirecting-static-files-elsewhere.1518605/
Win 8.1 & 10:

But the regedit and junction point things you find are a fail waiting to happen.
 
Solution

Jan00

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Oct 27, 2014
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Nevermind, I deemed all these works to be too troublesome and a waste of time, so I move some important files to the SSD and format the old HDD instead. Anyway, thanks for your response!