Windows 10 Specifying a Different Drive for Environment Variables When C Drive is a Limited-Space SSD

  • Thread starter Thread starter DavidStocksHyp
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DavidStocksHyp

Like many millions of people, my C drive is a limited capacity SSD and my D drive is a standard SATA. There is nowhere near enough space of the SSD to store my data, yet factory installations always seem to default all the %USER..% folder to C:\users\username.

I should say I do have a professional IT background, however not deep into the innards of Windows. Most most users will not. I find it astonishing that

Windows doesn't already detect whether the C drive is an SSD and automatically defaults to D for user data. It should at least ask the question during initial setup.


I have done my best to reset the various folders using right-click --> Properties --> Location, and this works fairly well. However there are a number of applications, e.g. DropBox, that won't let me backup my Documents, Pictures, etc., folders because my %HOMEPATH% still points to C drive. NB Neither %HOMEPATH% or %USERPROFILE% appear in System --> Environment Variables at all, so I can't change it that way. The registry has these user folders listed in quite a number of places, so there's no one easy setting. Anyway, I need to be absolutely sure about what to change in case I render the machine unusable. (I should say that I have placed my user folders in the top level D:\, rather than D:\users\username because there will never be another user on this machine.)


Trawling through the internet, there are thousands of complex descriptions of ways to change these various folders, but these are mostly written by and for experienced users, and often no longer apply to Win 10.


Have Microsoft come up with an easy way to say, "Put my data on the D drive, please."? Failing that, how do I make sure that all the environment variables are pointing to the correct locations?


(Also is %HOMEPATH% only applicable User account data, and is it advisable to leave the AppData folder on the SSD?)

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