Windows 8.1 Boot files on SSD and Program files on HDD

Question

This query might have been asked numerous times but still I am not able to get the correct and proper guidelines answer for this issue/query.

What I want to know and configure is the following.

With a pre-installed Windows OS which comes with most of the laptop, we get a single partition where both the BOOT and the program files resides on the same drive/partition. Now, when we buy the laptop which has customizable options like having both SSD and HDD combined, we may want to achieve this feature

1. Have required BOOT files reside on SSD
2. Program files to be moved to HDD

How to Configure and enhance the Windows OS system (which will be on SSD) for faster and clean booting and have all the application that were pre-installed and future installations to reside on HDD.

In my understanding, we need to do registry modification so that Windows system will understand that program files will reside on the different drive or partition and only boot files will be on SSD which is typically drive 'C'. When there is a OS crash, things need to be recovered/re-installed/re-configured etc, we need to have a mapping file which can be re-applied so that the Windows OS will understand and keep the configuration as-is with out we having to go and installing all the application once again.

I believe this can be achieve but how do we go about doing this?

Answer 1

1. Open regedit

2. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion 3

3. Right click on the value ProgramFilesDir and change default value C:\Program Files to D:\Program Files or whatever you like

Regarding your second query. Some softwares need not be reinstalled after an OS reinstall, like firefox, chrome etc. But many other softwares need to be installed again as they store different information in registry,install custom drivers etc, which will be lost once we reinstall windows. One such example is anti virus application. They install their own drivers and other services in OS installation drive, that are absolutely necessary for them to function. So when you install windows again you have to reinstall the application.