I recently had a HD crash and have the opportunity to reinstall my OS, APPs and
Data, I would like to Install the OS in its own partition.I'm running XP Pro,
4GB RAM and a 120GB HD.The Documents and Settings and Program Files
Folders are automatically set up in the Root Directory.The only idea that seems worth pursuing is getting the Document and Settings
folder into a separate partition. To me, putting the Document and Settings in
the root directory by default was and is a really bad idea on Microsofts
part.Think about it, a lot of applications put something useful and
needed in there. Email, data, application data and databases, etc. Should the OS
crash that's all gone. That's why backups are necessary. A lot of people, for
whatever reason, can't, don't or won't create backups. Users are, therefore,
cursed by their 'stupidity'.I've read, on many boards, about how to
solve this problem with some approaches that suggest that all one
has to do is 'move' the D and S Folder over to the new partition which neglects
the D and S hierachy tree in the Registry. Other approaches involve the method put forth
by MS to copy the contents of the D and S folder to a new folder, rename it and
move it to the new partition. After that they suggest that the user access the
registry and do a line by line replacement of the new path for the old Document
and Settings path. This doesn't work, but I won't go into that
now.Lastly there is the method of moving the default location of the D
and S Folder at OS installation using the 'Unattended' install method. This
seems to hold some promise and I'll look into it more. Has anyone ever tried this?Lots of thanks in
advance for all help and suggestions
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