I decided to write a reply because there are really no good tutorials on this subject online. If moving program files causes problems despite the use of NTFS junctions, you can revert to the old situation by executing junction -d "C:\Program Files\BF Program" and moving the corresponding files back. A Windows XP alternative is Junction from Sysinternals, for which the syntax is simply: junction "C:\Program Files\BF Program" "D:\Program Files\BF Program".
The command to create such junctions would be: mklink /J "C:\Program Files\BF Program" "D:\Program Files\BF Program", but the mklink command was introduced in Vista and is not available for Windows XP. Nevertheless, to be on the safe side, I would recommend only creating junctions for a few big (sub)directories instead of the entire Program Files folder. Overall, they are sufficiently transparent that this method is unlikely to cause major problems. Perhaps most notably, deleting junctions does not delete their target. There are a few exceptions where junctions behave differently. Other software, including the operating system, will still be able to access the data through C:\Program Files\ normally, but they no longer take up space on that particular drive.
settings).Īssuming your program files currently reside on an NTFS partition, you can physically move data to another drive (not a network share and preferably not a removable drive) and create a junction in its original location. Installed software in the Program Files directory is usually so tied up with the rest of the system, that moving the program would break it and cause dozens of miscellaneous problems elsewhere: broken file associations, uninstallers.īecause these ties are created by the installer, you can cleanly and relatively safely 'move' program files by uninstalling the software and reinstalling it in a different place, but this requires a lot of manual effort and the procedure might unintentionally clean out data from the user space as well (e.g.
0 kommentar(er)
