I solved the issue with Steam Mover, a free application that would move contents from the main drive to another drive with the help of Junctions. That way it was possible to move some of the Steam games to different partitions without affecting the functionality of the games or Steam.

JunctionMaster is a new software that is currently offered as an alpha version which means it is at the beginning of the development.

The program offers similar options to relocate folders to other partitions or hard drives without changing the folder path.

Examples of where this may help:

• I bought a new hard drive and want to move some of my program files to it without having to change a thing, or reinstall the software
• I have an SSD and want to minimize writes to it. Therefore, I need to Move and Link high traffic folders to another drive – a conventional one
• I am out of space on my primary hard drive partition and want to move folders from it without having to change the path I reference them by

The program integrates into the Windows Explorer shell adding a new option to move and link the selected folder.

This opens a warning first and then a new window with options to select the new location of the selected folder.

A click on Move and Link in the window moves (not copies) the folder and its data to the new location and adds information at the old location that the folder has been moved. Windows and applications will follow the redirect to access the files and the folder.

JunctionMaster can be started from the start menu or its installation directory as well which opens a different interface which is solely used for finding and removing junctions from selected locations.

JunctionMaster is provided as a 32-bit and 64-bit version at the developer website. The program itself is compatible with all Windows operating systems from Windows XP on plus Windows NT and Windows 2000.

Could be fatal for commercial software that has been bought as it will stop working altogether or revert back to a trial version that is most likely expired. You could uninstall and reinstall the software program. Could be trouble for users who do not have the serial number at hand anymore if the software is commercial. Could also be problematic because of custom settings that will most likely be gone unless they are stored globally.

A quick search on the Internet revealed no free software programs that aid the user in the process. The most popular commercial software program seems to be Application Mover by Funduc which costs $15 for a single user license. We like free here at Ghacks which is why the following way to move applications from one location to another should work as well for you.

Symbolic links come to the rescue. They can be used to point from the original folder to a new folder. Windows will recognize this as one folder in the original location although the files are located on another drive. To move c:\program1 to d:\program1 one would move the contents of c:\program1 to the d drive and create a symbolic link in c:\program1 pointing to the new location.

The process would therefor involve the following steps:

• Move (or copy) the files on c:\program1 to d:\program1
• Create a symbolic link from c:\program1 to d:\program1

There are several programs that can be used to create symbolic links, for example Junction by Sysinternals or SHJunction by Bitsum. The first program is command line driven while the second comes with a graphical user interface.

There is also a Windows Shell Extension for those who prefer to create the symbolic links in Windows Explorer.

A practical example would be to store files and directories in a different location than they have to reside in. This could be the Firefox profile directory, a Skype directory or the Windows Documents and settings folder. You basically tell Windows to look into the original folder but also in the linked folder for files.

NTFS Link offers three ways of creating hard links and junctions. The first and probably easiest way is by dragging and dropping a file or folder with the right mouse button to another location. The others are by making use of the New parameter in the right-click menu in Windows Explorer while the last works by right-clicking on an empty folder only.

The drag and drop function proves to be really useful and an uncomplicated way of creating hard links and junctions. It should however be noted that NTFS Links works best when run in pre-Vista operating systems as Windows Vista comes with its own possibilities to create symbolic links.

Users installing the software need to have administrator rights to do so and should note that only NTFS drives support the creation which means that it cannot be used on partitions formatted with FAT file systems. It should also be noted that Link Shell Extension is compatible with 64-bit editions of Windows XP and Windows Vista.

The type of link that is created depends on the source that is picked by the user. Picking files will create hardlinks, folders will create junctions and a partition will create a volume mountpoint. The benefit of creating that file system is that files and folders can be accessed in multiple places instead of just the source location.

In addition to the three link types specified above the Windows Vista version of Link Shell Extension supports the creation of Symbolic Links which have been introduced in the operating system.

The creation of remote links within SMB mapped network NTFS drives is supported by the software program as well. The easiest way to get an overview of the capabilities of Link Shell Extension is to visit the homepage which lists all supported modes and functions.