Low Disk Space ? Move Installed Programs To Another Drive Without Reinstallation

As you install more and more programs in Windows, the primary partition gradually fills up with program files and folders. When you try to install something which requires a good amount of disk space, you see that the primary partition is running on low disk space. A balloon pop up is thrown by Windows, as shown below:

Example: I am a PC game freak and try out newer computer games which gradually fills up the space allocated to the primary Windows partition. When I try to install new games or software programs, I get this low disk space warning.

In such situations, you have to remove some programs, games and other software installations to free up disk space in the primary partition. You can’t cut and paste the files or folders to another drive because this will break the registry settings and those programs won’t work.

However, this free tool for Windows will allow you to move installed programs or games to another partition and free up disk space in the drive where operating system is installed.

How to Move Installed Programs To a Non Windows partition

1. First download Steammover ( ~ 1.14 MB)– it’s a free program for Windows7 and Windows Vista which will allow you to transfer the installed programs to another non operating system drive. The program does not supports Windows XP.

2. Next create a new folder on a non operating system drive ( e.g E:\Steam)

3. Run the Steammover.exe file and you will see the following window.

3. Now select the folder in your C drive (or operating system drive) which you want to transfer to another drive. For the sake of this tutorial, I will try to move my Skype folder out of the OS drive

4. Select all the sub-folders and hit the right arrow button. This will immediately open a command prompt window and some random commands will be executed. On successful transfer of the chosen files and folders to the destination directory, you will see the following window:

5. You are done. Now browse to the custom directory and run the program – it will run normally.

This is a really neat way to move installed programs to another drive without the remove programs / reinstall shuffle. Thanks Aaron

Watch the Screencast

I have squeezed the entire procedure of moving program setups in the following screencast. Check it out!

If you share your computer with multiple users, make sure to read our earlier tip on how you can restrict users from opening a hard disk partition.