Reinstall Windows 11 after relocating Users Folder

Hi All,

I had installed Windows 10 when I had last purchased it and had relocated the Users folder using this tutorial on the Windows 10 Forum - Move Users Folder Location in Windows 10.

This was then upgraded to Windows 11 through updates.

I now plan to reinstall Windows 11 again. How do I reinstall in the same way keeping the existing Users folder in the D: ?

I attempted to perform a reset to avoid a reinstall but Windows does not let me stating that the Users folder is not on C:.

Hi vrushankd
Run the tutorials again. This is what I have to do, relocate the user folders after a fresh install. It doesn’t take long in my opinion. Windows will always use the default locations, one of the reasons is because it want’s to force you to backup with OnerDrive, apart from being the fact that the default locations have always been… the default locations.

I am not sure that there is another way.

Be sure to use the Windows 11 tutorials, there may be subtle differences to those in the Ten forums..
I am not certain that you really need to look at each tutorial, I believe one is the same as the other less the folder name. But here are most of them anyway:








P.S.
There has been the occasion (seems random) where I have had to disable OneDrive first, because it locks the user folder to OneDrive. But it’s only happened to me a couple of times. There are tutorials for disabling OneDrive in the Tutorials section.

vrushankd said:

I now plan to reinstall Windows 11 again. How do I reinstall in the same way keeping the existing Users folder in the D: ?

I attempted to perform a reset to avoid a reinstall but Windows does not let me stating that the Users folder is not on C:.

Click to expand...

Are you unwilling to ignore the Users folder entirely and simply save files to somewhere else on D? Or even C?

D:\data or C:\data for instance.

As far as I know, there is nothing sacred about C:\Users.

If doing a repair install i.e. installing Windows 11 over itself then the existing user folders are preserved.

If you clean install using a MS account, the default location for desktop, documentss, pictures, and videos will automatically default to Onedrive. Before you can move the default location of your user folders, you will have to first turn off Onedrive folder backup syncing and unlink your account and the PC from Onedrive. If you clean install with a local account you will not run into this issue.

antspants said:

Did you read his post correctly?
vrushankd has already moved the user folders to an external drive, now vrushankd wants to reinstall Windows and wants to know if there is a way to avoid having to relocate the folders in Windows settings again. At least that is how I understand it.

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Yes. You understood correctly. I do not want to rename / backup / copy again.

So it seems, there is no way to do it through a clean install then? What about the reset option? Anyway to bypass the error prompt ?

Steve C said:

If doing a repair install i.e. installing Windows 11 over itself then the existing user folders are preserved.

Click to expand...

Recent updates have botched many things so am planning to do a fresh start.

vrushankd said:

Recent updates have botched many things so am planning to do a fresh start.

Click to expand...

No matter what road you take, it is best taken after making an image of your current install.

antspants said:

No matter what road you take, it is best taken after making an image of your current install.

Click to expand...

Hi,

This is an old thread but still relevant since I am planning a clean Windows 11 2H2 install, before adding Atlas OS over and, then moving on restoring at times large amount user data and programs - and this for three PCs.

I was wondering if I could save and leverage the USERS from the Old install, located on a separate D: drive from my Win 11 OS C: drive, to migrate by moving each user's data back into the related user profile shell folders in the new USERS created after a clean Install.

Would it help beforehand to rename USERS as USERS_old to prevent flattening during the clean Windows 11 install and would it be reliable (after the clean Install) in restoring user profile from Documents, Pictures, and Music shell folders?

I realize that it is best practice to clean the partitions including the separate D drive with USERS before the Clean install - Thanks Mae from Atlas Forum. Would it be fine to only clean the OS drive partitions and leave the USERS drive alone?

There is a large amount of Data on two of three systems that I am planning to update Windows, namely user data (mostly videos, pictures and music files) or program data like flight simulator sceneries. My motivation in trying this shortcut is that moving files within a drive is quicker than restoring from Backup.
Of course, I will back up with Free Paragon Backup Restore 17.9, and I will rely on these archives/images in case something goes wrong. Note that I preferred Macrium Reflect and evaluating Paragon here, it is a little painful and quirky.

Thank you for your input on this system restoration strategies

I’ll be honest, I have never migrated a USER profile. I wouldn’t know where to start. One can only hope that someone more experienced that me (they’re in the thousands) can advise you.

For user folder content only, the simple process of backup the old then copy paste into the new is probably a viable option.

@antspants is absolutely correct. I would never migrate a user folder. I've encountered too many permission problems when folks tried to shortcut things . Keep in mind, if you set up the clean install with a MS account, it will be tied to Onedrive. With as much data as you indicate you have, you won't have enough onedrive space to accomodate it unless you have per chance subscribed to Ofc365 to get the 1TB onedrive storage. If you want to retain your user folders documents, desktop, pictures, and videos on a drive in your system, I strongly suggest you set up a local account on the clean install. Instructions on how to do that are in the clean install tutorial. Clean Install Windows 11 Tutorial

glasskuter said:

@antspants is absolutely correct. I would never migrate a user folder. I've encountered too many permission problems when folks tried to shortcut things . Keep in mind, if you set up the clean install with a MS account, it will be tied to Onedrive. With as much data as you indicate you have, you won't have enough onedrive space to accomodate it unless you have per chance subscribed to Ofc365 to get the 1TB onedrive storage. If you want to retain your user folders documents, desktop, pictures, and videos on a drive in your system, I strongly suggest you set up a local account on the clean install. Instructions on how to do that are in the clean install tutorial. Clean Install Windows 11 Tutorial

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Hi @glasskuter,

Thank you for your clarification and recommendation.

Yes, I am setting up Local User Account on the Clean Install, Onedrive is not an issue, it is not started.

The Users folder is located on a separate drive from OS drive right from the clean install steps and by using the edited unattended.xml script, which Rufus provides.

If you want to try changing the default location of your user files to be the folders on the secondary drive. here's the way to do it. I can not guarantee you won't encounter permission problems when accessing the files. If you do, you will have to change permissions on the folder. That's all I can suggest. This is the tutorial for the documents folder. Without me having to list all the individual tutorials for the other user folders, they're all listed at the bottom of this one. The process is the same for all of them

glasskuter said:

If you want to try changing the default location of your user files to be the folders on the secondary drive. here's the way to do it. I can not guarantee you won't encounter permission problems when accessing the files. If you do, you will have to change permissions on the folder. That's all I can suggest. This is the tutorial for the documents folder. Without me having to list all the individual tutorials for the other user folders, they're all listed at the bottom of this one. The process is the same for all of them

Move or Restore Default Location of Documents Folder in Windows 11

This tutorial will show you how to move or restore the default location of the Documents folder for your account in Windows 10 and Windows 11. The Documents folder (shell:personal) is a component of the user profile that is used as a unified location for storing personal data. By default, the...

www.elevenforum.com

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Hi @glasskuter,

It might have not been clear in my previous posts but, in effect, I already have USERS relocated on D: following @Kari 's guide on relocating the Users tree and other related threads like the one started by @Rangoon with Windows 11 (see links below). It is done at the clean Install stage and it is automated with an unattended.xml file booting with Rufus. It has worked well for me to setup and use under Windows 11 23H2, I am now planning to move to 24H2 with a Clean Install approach and Local users accounts on that system and will carry with two more. @Megahertz has reported similar success and might have good inputs here too.
Move Users Folder Location in Windows 10
Fully relocating Users tree in Windows 11

What I am asking is about a practical and efficient way of migrating data back into (already) relocated Users from old to new select user shells like Documents, Pictures, Videos. With three systems to clean install with Windows 24H2, I am looking forward to streamline the process.
Note that, for the most part, I am not interested in App data and will not restore it - I can cherry pick from AppData or ProgramData archives as needed (after the bulk user data migration). The OS with Programs and Program data are not moved and stay on C:.

A similar situation is for linked folders of large flight sim's scenery data on another drive. For this case, I am planning to disconnect the drive and recreate the link afterwards, and also get Steam to detect installed programs data in its library during the reinstall. This is documented elsewhere.

Two approaches came to mind about Users shell data migrations:
1) leave user data in place let it be overwritten - or -
2) move it to a safe place on the same drive or another drive and restore it later

I am not sure that I can leave D:User folder in place and let Win 11 create a new profile (keeping the same profile name), maybe deleting or renaming AppData, and expect it will end up with the user data preserved. It'd be nice, wouldn't it?

On the other hand, it seems safe to rename the Users to Users_Old, and let Windows Clean install process to carry on with the creation of a new Users folder tree with it's user profiles on D:, for later use, isn't it?

Then, the data migration is done by copying (cut/past, teracopy or else) or moving, for example, all Documents folder's content (cutting and pasting or moving) from D:\Users_Old\JohnDo\Documents to D:\Users\JohnDo\Documentsv; where Users_Old is the Users tree left in place on secondary drive before initiating a Clean install.

Note that for Windows 23H2 clean install, I followed this route, but using a backup of Users which erased when its location partition had been clean (cleared) during the Clean Install. At the time I had to first restore back my Windows 10 systems image onto a spare drive to fetch and manually copy back the users data. This is time consuming and slow, the timestamp for the "Created" date and time is lost, replaced by that of when it is restored.
This is why it'd be practical to leave the original data ready to recover, skipping the restore image and copy over steps, and just moving around on the same drive. Is this approach correct and valid?

I realize there s probably pros and cons and more than one approach for multi layered programs and user data restoration after OS clean install.

I look forward to streamlining the process for a home use on three personal PCs and in particular my VR flight sim PC. These three systems will be described in my profile signature later on.

Thank you again for your inputs before I get started and plow away.

glasskuter said:

If you clean install using a MS account, the default location for desktop, documentss, pictures, and videos will automatically default to Onedrive. Before you can move the default location of your user folders, you will have to first turn off Onedrive folder backup syncing and unlink your account and the PC from Onedrive. If you clean install with a local account you will not run into this issue.

Click to expand...

I moved my user folders to drive D: and didn't have do anything with OneDrive.

I last month I did a Win 11 clean install on a laptop that had D:\users and has two drives: A small SSD for Windows and programs and a HDD for data.
- I first moved all my data from D:\users\Luiz to an external folder (D:\data)
- I booted from a Win 11 installation drive as UEFI, deleted ALL partitions on the SSD and began the installation.
- When it asked me to create the user account I launched audit mode by Ctrl+Shift+F3
- Once in audit mode, I made sure the HDD was assigned letter D: and I deleted D:\users folder (from previous installation).
- Ran the sysprep command. Once back to OOBE, I created a local account D:\users\Luiz
- Once Win 11 was running normally I moved my data back from D:\data to D:\users\Luiz.
- Connected to the Internet and let it update.

antspants said:

Did you read his post correctly?
vrushankd has already moved the user folders to an external drive, now vrushankd wants to reinstall Windows and wants to know if there is a way to avoid having to relocate the folders in Windows settings again. At least that is how I understand it.

Click to expand...

When you do a clean install, default user folders are always set back to C drive.

You then change location from file properties back to the location on another drive, and click no when it asks to copy files to your new selected location (no need as user folders on C drive are empty).

This does not remove existing files on relocated folder, but I advise that the user backs these up as a precaution.

I do not know of any way to automatically select folders on other drives without going though the relocation procedure. A clean install has no knowledge of where a user has relocated user folders to do - it would have to be designed to "study" existing setup, save the settings and restore them after.

One possibility I have not tried is to use the new backup method and save settings and use the new backup method during the clean install, but I would be very surprised if this works. I will give it a go in a vm. EDIT: No it does not work.

cereberus said:

I do not know of any way to automatically select folders on other drives without going though the relocation procedure. A clean install has no knowledge of where a user has relocated user folders to do - it would have to be designed to "study" existing setup, save the settings and restore them after.

Click to expand...

Someone clarify to me here. Isn't this exactly what the tutorial I mentioned in post #15 does? IMO he would have to go through that same process for all user folders he has located on secondary drive. As I satated, this is under the assumption he's using a local account and onedrive is out of the picture.

Megahertz said:

I last month I did a Win 11 clean install on a laptop that had D:\users and has two drives: A small SSD for Windows and programs and a HDD for data.
- I first moved all my data from D:\users\Luiz to an external folder (D:\data)
- I booted from a Win 11 installation drive as UEFI, deleted ALL partitions on the SSD and began the installation.
- When it asked me to create the user account I launched audit mode by Ctrl+Shift+F3
- Once in audit mode, I made sure the HDD was assigned letter D: and I deleted D:\users folder (from previous installation).
- Ran the sysprep command. Once back to OOBE, I created a local account D:\users\Luiz
- Once Win 11 was running normally I moved my data back from D:\data to D:\users\Luiz.
- Connected to the Internet and let it update.

Click to expand...

Cool,
Thanks @Megahertz for the clarification.
This is exactly what I had in mind, except, renaming the the full Users folder with all profiles in it - to be deleted later too.
By move to an external Folder, you did mean to move (and not duplicate) your data around on the same D: drive, and not an external drive?

On a different note it looks like I can only specify two systems for my profile, and i added mas t two oldest, the newest is a Clevo laptop (portable desktop more like) with i9-9900K.