Remember my article on Lenovo Y510 woes? The summary – Lenovo makes excellent laptops and has great customer service, but the Lenovo IdeaPad Y510 (And perhaps some other laptops of theirs) come pre-configured with a tiny, easily revertible C partition for Vista and a large D partition for data. The problem is that all the windows user data.. favorites, desktop, documents, music, etc… are all also configured by default to sit on that tiny C partition. As is the swap file. So you end up crashing Vista fairly quickly.
Well, a few people have written in wondering how on earth they should move their default user data locations to D. Here’s my how-to…
*disclaimer* While I am pretty good with computers, and while this information should work for you, I can’t be held responsible if this doesn’t work for you. If you have important data, back it up first, just in case.
- Find your current user data folders — Open Explorer by right-clicking your start button and choosing Explore. Use the scroll area on the left to scroll up to the top; you should see your user name just under Desktop. Click on your user name. You will see a list of folders you want to move over to D, but you can’t just drag and drop them. So…
- Leaving the first window open for reference, right-click on Start again and open a new explorer window. Scroll up and click on Computer, then click on D to open it.
- Right-click in the empty space. Choose new then folder to create a new folder. Call it Users. Double click Users to open it.
- Right-click in the new empty space to create a new folder. Call this one by your username exactly as it’s listed in the other Explorer window, then double click it.
- Now you’re going to create several new folders. Use the same folder names you’ve got listed in the other window. Go ahead and make all of them. The icons will look like regular folder icons, but the names should be the same. You can now close the window with the new folders, and go back to the original folder list.
- Right-click one folder (any of them except application data), and choose properties. Click on the Location tab. Click on Move, and then browse for your new D-drive folder. It’ll ask you if you’re sure you want to do this. You decide 😉 But it should move those files over to D, and then you’d simply go on to the next item on the list.
- From the explorer window, right click on Computer and click Properties.
- Click “Advanced System Settings” and you should end up in a dialog box with the Advanced tab selected
- Click on Settings under Performance.
- Click on the Advanced tab again. Yes, this is double advanced. Again, I’m not responsible if you take my free tips and you misunderstand them or don’t like the results.
- Click Change under Virtual Memory
- Un-check the “automatically manage” option if it is checked.
- Select C, choose “No paging file” and click Set. You’ll get a warning. Consider yourself warned; but this worked OK for me.
- Then select D, and either choose System Managed Size or Custom Size. I’ve selected Custom Size and put the same number in the minimum and maximum to help keep disk fragmentation in check. My number is 6000 MB, which is just under twice my physical ram size.
- When you click set again, and try to click out, it’ll ask you to restart your computer. You can go for it.
OH! And for Moving the Swap File:
This works well for me. Let me know how it works for you.
Legend of Velda 
Thanks, it worked for me too! But, what do I do about the FaceProv file?
Can I delete it? or anything else? It is taking up 94,381 KB of space on my C drive!
Thanks again, Arlene
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Give it the boot – it’ll regenerate every now and then and you can delete it then as well.
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Everyting was already there up until step 4. I stopped. Should the ‘Users’ and Christopher’ files already have been there in D?
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Hey Chris, if it was already there, fantastic. Maybe they’re coming out of the box configured to point to D now 🙂 Did it help with giving your c partition some breathing room?
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I don’t know how I came by “d” for data but i’m glad I did I think- I don’t know too much about the workings of computers,but enough to get by. I bought a lenovo pc not knowing it had two drives until later down the road and then I thought that when c drive filled up it would automatically go to d drive- “not so”–what I did was to drag files over from c to d, but that didn’t work so well and then when I saw d for data and the word lenovo, I read on and I followed your instructions. Even though you indicated laptop and I moved over one file and that was good- I stopped there because I don’t know what a swap file is and do I have to do this part–thanks again JOEM
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SO grateful for this information! I’ve been wrestling with this for two weeks and can’t afford to take it to a geek for help! In the meantime, email down, no downloads would work – like security updates. I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t googled faceprov! Thanks Velda
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No problem! I hope things are running smoothly for you now 😀 You too, JOEM 🙂
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Hello, I am doing everything you said, and it isn’t working for me. It says file does not exist, Make a new one? Everytime I click yes, it just goes away! Please please HELP!!
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It sounds like you skipped step 5, fwiw.
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well this did not work for me…it deleted all my thumbnails also. I wish it would have worked for me. Thanks for trying though…
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Hi,
I copied my folder file names (instruction 5) which are the “Contacts, Desktop…” etc. have a “Roaming” folder as part of that group but also see it listed under the AppData that you said not to select. The “Roaming” folder outside of the AppData folder contains a file that says Intel/Wireless that is empty. The Roaming folder inside the AppData contains a lot; Adobe, Arcsoft, Foxit Software…”
Question: Should the Intel information be in the Roaming folder under the AppData or should I move it to Drive D with the other folders?
Thanks for your help.
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Also, What happens to the existing swap file when you select the “no paging file” option? Is the information in virtual gone and the new swap file created in D: is empty?
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Hey there, I just got back from a trip and I’m a bit swamped right now, but I might have time to look this weekend. Were you able to sort this out?
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