Freeing up disk space (especially on C: drive) is paramount when you find your system running slower and slower as the time passes by. A small system drive will be filled up quickly with frequent windows patches and updates plus software installations.
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This problem can be solved by using Sysintenal's Junction . By using Junction to move the program to another disk/SSD or even a RAM disk without reinstalling the software, the system disk content can be lightened and the wear and tear reduced.
1. Copy the Junction.exe file to the c:\Windows\system32 folder.
2. Let say the program we want to move reside in c:\Program Files\Sample. Copy the content of the entire Sample folder content to d:\Sample (d:\ can be SSD or RAMdisk).
3. Delete the c:\Program Files\Sample folder or better still, rename the Sample folder in C: drive. Renaming the sample folder will keep the content intact, so that if you make any mistakes in the process, the content can be recovered.
4.Open command prompt and type the following command after the c: prompt.
c:\Junction "C:\Program Files\Sample" D:\Sample.
This command will create a symbolic link in C:\Program Files\Sample for D:\Sample where the actual program resides. However, a checking with Windows Explorer will show the program in c:\Program Files\Sample.
Here, we have saved the space on drive C: without re installation of the program. When we run our program with the original short cut, the program runs without a glitch.The actual accessing of the program storage location can be confirmed by viewing the activities with Process Monitor.
If our main system disk is a SSD (which most of us worry about its wear and tear level with frequent write), we could move the software program location to a RAMdisk (example using Dataram or Gilisoft RAMdisk). Aside from that benefit, we also enjoy speed improvement when running the software as RAMdisk is multiple times faster than a SSD.
1. Copy the Junction.exe file to the c:\Windows\system32 folder.
2. Let say the program we want to move reside in c:\Program Files\Sample. Copy the content of the entire Sample folder content to d:\Sample (d:\ can be SSD or RAMdisk).
3. Delete the c:\Program Files\Sample folder or better still, rename the Sample folder in C: drive. Renaming the sample folder will keep the content intact, so that if you make any mistakes in the process, the content can be recovered.
4.Open command prompt and type the following command after the c: prompt.
c:\Junction "C:\Program Files\Sample" D:\Sample.
This command will create a symbolic link in C:\Program Files\Sample for D:\Sample where the actual program resides. However, a checking with Windows Explorer will show the program in c:\Program Files\Sample.
Here, we have saved the space on drive C: without re installation of the program. When we run our program with the original short cut, the program runs without a glitch.The actual accessing of the program storage location can be confirmed by viewing the activities with Process Monitor.
If our main system disk is a SSD (which most of us worry about its wear and tear level with frequent write), we could move the software program location to a RAMdisk (example using Dataram or Gilisoft RAMdisk). Aside from that benefit, we also enjoy speed improvement when running the software as RAMdisk is multiple times faster than a SSD.