Profile Relocator is a free program for Microsoft Windows systems that allows you to move user profiles to another location.
The Windows operating system stores all user profiles on the hard drive partition Windows was installed on along with all operating system files.
Those user profile folders can grow quite large especially if the designated folders for multimedia files and documents are used extensively. Programs such as mail clients or Internet browsers can also amass huge amounts of data on that partition.
Windows does not come with tools to move user profiles to another drive. A manual way is available that involves moving user profile files and folders to another drive, and changing system path information in the Windows Registry.
The main issue with the manual method is that any error can lead to profile corruption so that the operating system cannot load it anymore.
Profile Relocator
The software Profile Relocator offers an automated option that is less error-prone than the manual method. It relocates the user profile folder for profiles that are created after you run it.
This does mean that existing profiles will remain in their original location on the main drive, and that newly created profiles will be stored in the new location.
Profile Relocator is ideally used after the installation of the operating system as you can easily start to use a newly created profile on the system afterwards so that data gets stored in the new location and not on the main drive.
So, the idea is to run Profile Locator after installing Windows and starting it for the first time. You would then create a second user profile after you ran Profile Locator, and use that profile from that moment on to take advantage of the new storage location.
Using the program is simple. It does not make available options, so that you only have to follow the instructions on the screen, usually clicking on a button, to complete the process.
Users who want to move the already existing Windows user profiles can still use the manual approach to do so.
Profile Relocator is only compatible with Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 10.
It requires the Microsoft .net Framework 4.5.1 and can be downloaded from the developer’s website. Users who run the software should consider creating a backup of the operating system before they start the operation. This is just a precaution, but if things go wrong, it allows you to restore the system to its previous state without having to run extensive troubleshooting.