xcopy C:\Users\Keith\*.* E:\Keith /E /C /H /K /O Let me explain these options: /E: This tells XCOPY to copy everything – all directories, including empty ones. /C: This tells XCOPY to continue copying, even if there’s an error. Since this is such a big copy and might take a long time, I’d rather have it continue copying as much as it can the first time around – if there are any errors I can deal with them later. Depending on your preferences, you may want to omit this option so the copy stops if there is a problem. /H: This makes sure hidden and system files are copied as well – very important. /K: This makes sure all file attributes (such as hidden and archive) are preserved. /O: This is the most important one – this causes XCOPY to preserve permissions on files & directories. A note on permissions: when you copy your user profile, remember that all your user profile files and folders will inherit permissions from the parent folder – in my example, this is E:\Keith. This may cause problems if any of these inherited permissions conflict with the existing permissions. This is why I generally use a brand-new folder on a non-system drive, created by my user account – this ensures that my user account has full access to this folder. You might even want to check the permissions of the folder you copied from and set the permissions on the new folder to explicitly match the old one. In my example, I might copy the permissions from the old C:\Users\Keith folder and make sure the new E:\Keith folder has the exact same permissions set (including anything that C:\Users\Keith might have inherited). Rename my user profile folder with the command (Making sure that I was in the C:\Users directory): ren Keith Keith.old I’d create the junction: mklink /J C:\Users\Keith E:\Keith