Highly unlikely. If you can't copy them from where they are now, the same result would apply if they were on any other partition/drive. No the best choice because: 1. windows 7 uses approx 8GB of space. Once you'll update the system, the size will increase drastically. Plus (depending on your settings and usage): hibernation file/page file size/programs and games/temporary files (ex: extracting an 4 gb file with winrar)/logs and memory dumps (I've seen dmps of 500mb) . Think carefully. Unless you want to learn how to move system folders from one drive to another and correct their paths in the registry, i would recommend that you do not try to install a programs/games on another partition. The reason is simple: it will be installed in both places (half on program files in c: and other parts in your defined drive). Beside the ownership problem, xcopy could also not copy folders because they have spaces. xcopy /M /E /I /Q /H /Y "C:\Program Files" --> only program files is enclosed in quotes. I'm thinking, if it reaches a folder in program files with spaces, then it'll skip that folder and move to the next. Just a theory. Perhaps a loop would be better: for /f "tokens=*" %%a in ('dir/b/ad "%programdata%"') do ( robocopy.exe /e "%%a" SOMEWHERE>nul 2>&1 ) and see how it goes. i hope this is the correct syntax for robocopy.