At the risk of asking a duplicate question (a few searches yielded no good question/answer),  and after messing this up royally myself () I am going to ask:  What is a least-trouble some but still effective way to move my user data onto a separate drive.  Goals:   OS/boot drive is used pretty much for booting and OS and Programs only Data disk is for all conceivable user data (Photos, Videos, etc) If I by change remove "Data" drive, have Windows still be fully operational   What I did in the linked question, was me using a hard link/junction to point C:\Users to D:\Users.  It worked perfectly for me, until I removed drive D and booted Windows, causing Windows to not be able to load User Profile.  And reattaching drive D, it did not fix my User Profile service issue and I did an OS reinstall to fix it.  So I am looking for a safer option, where my Data is still on another drive, but I can remove and replug drives as needed, with Windows breaking and still having a "Data" drive when I plug it back, with minimal recovery procedures (in case Windows complains about it missing)
90037
When I format the computer and reinstall Windows, my first step is move the My Documents folder to another partition. In Windows XP it wasn't enough because the desktop folder and another user folders was in the primary partition.  Now in Windows Vista and 7 we can use junctions/symlinks to "move" the folder to another partition and Windows and another programs will think that the data is in the primary partition.  What the fastest and secure steps to move the Users folder to another partition and to create the hardlinks correctly?
101270
I had a Mid-2012 MacBook Pro that recently stopped booting. I narrowed this down based on troubleshooting of the boot device to likely the SATA/hard drive connector/cable no longer working for whatever reason.  I have decided to sell the system. I'd like to know if I remove the hard drive (or in this case, an after-market SSD I've installed) from the system, will there be any other data (i.e. iCloud data) stored on the system on any other chip that I can reset in any way? I plan to reset the SMC/NVRAM before I sell the system off of to someone else.  Additionally, if I remove the hard drive, is the system still associated to iCloud (specifically Find My Mac) or any other service? If so, how do I disassociate it? The system will no longer boot even if I put in my boot device.  Thanks!
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Currently, my computer is dual-booting Linux and Windows 7. A series of unfortunate events has led to me needing to restore Windows using a restore disc.  I want to know if this can be done without formatting my entire hard drive, as I don't want to get rid of my Linux partition. That is, I want to reset Windows - which already has a partition on my hard drive - without affecting any of my other partitions on my drive.
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I have 2 identical drives in an old PC running as a mirror RAID (RAID1) using the Windows 7 software RAID. These drives are data-only drives and are not being used to boot an operating system.  How do I safely move these drives to a new PC?  The new PC is also running Windows 7.  There is a Windows Computer Management help article titled "Move Disks to Another Computer", which talks about dynamic disks, but I find it a bit confusing. It's not clear if all of the steps given are necessary for dynamic disks (of which mirrored disks are a type), and the step that is clearly for dynamic disks mentions menu items that don't exist for mirrored drives.  Basically, I'd appreciate any knowledge or experience in this area.
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I have two drives on my computer that have the following configuration:  Drive 1: 160GB, /home Drive 2: 40GB, /boot and /   Unfortunately, drive 2 seems to be dying, because trying to write to it is giving me errors, and checking out the SMART settings shows a sad state of affairs.  I have plenty of space on Drive 1, so what I'd like to do is move the / and /boot partitions to it, remove Drive 2 from the system, replace Drive 2 with a new drive, then reverse the process.  I imagine I need to do some updating to grub, and I need to move some things around, but I'm pretty baffled how to exactly go about this. Since this is my main computer, I want to be careful not to mess things up so I can't boot.
32122
No, this is not a , nor is it a solicitation on  to backup or  and only a little bit about Where to backup and When to do it.  This is basically a strategy question: what, where and when all together. "How" is not really relevant: there are tons of back-up programs out there and they all do the same basic thing: make copies of data.  But the real question is: are these back-up programs making copies of the data important to you?  How should you install&amp;run Ubuntu while safeguarding your data?  There is no "one size fits all" when it comes to computers, Ubuntu versions or a backup strategy, therefore I've split this up into 5 basic user types with each their own answer:       (or you're running in UEFI mode!)   And as the above does not fit everyone, one for the impatient:   !    So click one of the above links and go to your user type!  P.S. If you're running a server farm and you've read this question so far, I'm sorry: this is about a single PC, not a network, nor a server farm.
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I want to transfer my current system hard drive to a larger hard drive. Doing so, I thought of creating an image of my system hard drive which is 320 GB in size.   Would I be able to restore this image on a larger hard drive? I plan buying a 1TB hard drive.  If yes, how? I prefer no data loss.  I am using Windows 7
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I have an extra hard drive that I used to run Windows on before something technical went bad in the computer. The hard drive itself still works fine, however and I have attached it via SATA to my main computer and have gotten all of the files that I want off of it. I would like to clean it to just use for storage on my server. I am not really worried about safety, so I don't need anything like DBaN. What is the best way to clean all of the files off of it?
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I have a hard drive from an Ubuntu system that contains only media files. I would like to move that drive to a Windows 10 computer without losing all of the media. Is this possible, and if so, how can it be done?  I don't want to just mount the ext4 drive in Windows. I want to convert the drive from ext4 to NTFS.
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Well I have a netbook, so I can't play games on windows either, no problem. But I'm getting a new desktop PC with better hadware and it will be able to run the most popular games and I want to have Windows on it to play games and software not compatible with ubuntu. I also want to have Ubuntu, as my primary OS, so I will set a dual boot.   In this computer I will have a small SSD with both OS and a second drive (a 500gb HDD) to store my files. I want to avoid copying files from one OS to another every time I, ie, download a file. My question is: Is there any way that I could make both OS use that HDD for home, like set it as NTFS and make ubuntu mount it on /home and also make windows to store user files, like My Documents, My Videos and Downloads, etc, on that partition?
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In Windows 8 I can reset everything and reinstall Windows. I assume this will clear my drive and start from scratch? Is that right? Does this create a Windows.old folder?  I see this dialog, but aren't my settings and preferences saved in the cloud? If I screw up my settings and reset like this, are my settings also refreshed back to defaults?  Since I use SkyDrive to sync my files, my personal files are safe, right?    Also, in Windows 8 I can refresh my PC without affecting files. Are my desktop and/or Windows store apps uninstalled when I refresh my PC?  I see this dialog, but I still am not sure. For example, when it says apps are "kept" does that mean I don't have to buy them again or are they installed after the refresh is over for me? I assume "from disk" means desktop apps? Or maybe corp apps?    What would motivate a user to choose between these two?
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Is there a good tool/program that allows me to clone a system drive to another, smaller hard drive?  I've bought a new 64GB SSD drive and would like to move my current Windows 7 Professional 64-bit installation to that new drive. My current drive is a 200GB SATA drive with one partition only. Of course there's enough free space to shrink my current partition to less than 64GB.
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I have a laptop in which the internal drive bay has been destroyed, but the rest of the laptop works fine. I was wondering if it's possible to do a full installation of Windows 10 on a USB flash drive.  I'm aware of Windows To Go, but I'm not sure if it's what I want. I don't need a "portable" installation of Windows, I intend for the flash drive to be permanently connected to the computer. I would prefer for the system to function as normally as possible.  If I can't figure out how to do this, I'll probably just install Linux onto the flash drive instead.
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Let's say I have Windows installed on drive C, however I install all of my programs on the D drive, and I keep my user profile on the D drive as well (things like My Documents). How can I have Windows use those folders instead of the ones on the C drive?
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I have 3 partitions: one for Windows 7 (ntfs), one for Ubuntu (ext4) and one just for data (ntfs so both operating systems can see them).  My problem is that I had stored some files on the data partition using Ubuntu and when I booted Windows 7 all that data was gone! After that I couldn't find the files even when using Ubuntu.  My files were simply GONE :(  Is there something I can do in Ubuntu or is it just windows problem?
62926
I am in a similar situation as this poster except I have Windows 7 Pro: I have SSD which is the C drive which stores windows and a 1TB hard drive. I have created a CD with an image of Ubuntu. I'm still pretty new to all this so need a bit of hand holding!    I'm not clear from his post whether or not he has partitioned his hard drive prior to installing Ubuntu or not.   However judging from the response there 2nd hard drive sdb does not appear to be partitioned. The responder (Mitch) goes on to partition the drive using the Ubuntu installer as shown.    In my case I already have files stored on the second drive, can I still safely use the Ubuntu installation software to partition software? Or would it be better to use a different piece of software to partition the hard drive prior to install? Obviously I don't want the existing files to be wiped (although I have backed them up). FYI, I've never partitioned a hard drive before.  Also I noticed that other answers to the same problem suggest disconnecting the windows hard drive first.    2 ways, depending on exactly how you want to choose what OS you want to boot into.   You want to choose via the BIOS boot menu: Disconnect the current Windows drive Connect the other drive Install Ubuntu Choose the OS during the BIOS boot sequence You want to choose via the GRUB menu: Leave the Windows drive connected Connect the other drive Install Ubuntu to the new drive (be careful here that you choose the correct drive!) At boot time, you will be presented with a menu, allowing you which OS to boot into   As well as being safer (in that your Windows drive won't be wiped) especially important in my case as I don't have the capacity to back it up.   Is there any major advantages between choosing the OS via the BIOS as opposed to the Grub drive? FYI... I'm not even sure what a Grub drive is, I'm just looking for the easiest/quickest solution.  Mitch's original response seems to be the the GRUB based solution. Is this correct?   However all I have to do to amend Mitch's solution to the BIOS based one is to physically disconnect the windows drive after switching the boot to DVD drive in BIOS and then follow Mitch's instructions for the rest but having one drive instead of two.  I then reconnect the windows drive afterwards.  Do I have to make any other changes to the BIOS after this?
58800
I own 4 different computers which I often shuffle the primary OS's around on.  I specifically use Windows 7 Enterprise (work laptop) Windows 7 Ultimate (my primary desktop) Windows XP (my old laptop) and the Ubuntu distro of Linux (media center).  So, here's the plan, I just got a shiny new 16 GB USB key.  I want to put all 4 of these OS Images onto the key, and then be able to boot from that key, and select which operating system I want to install on the system.  I know how to make a bootable USB key, that's easy for me, but I looked around a little and didn't find any software utilities that can help me composite these operating system images into a multi-bootable installer selection, does anyone have any ideas? I'm sure I could probably do something with bootcamp, but I don't really have any experience there, so before I jumped into something like that I wanted to know if the SU community had any better ideas.  I'd like to point out, I'm also more than happy to listen to advice from the community on better ways to achieve this same, or similar effects!  Another thing I'd like to achieve is fully automated installation (especially if there is an easy way I can select profiles, this is system A's profile, it gets this system name, and has these users, etc.)  One last thought, I know there are many tools that can tweak the installer ISO's to embed the Product Key into a Windows OS Image.  What are some of the best tools for this?