Stilly -

There are utilities built into the neweer Windows versions that let you "migrate" files from an old system into the new, that take care of updating all the links; but I haven't heard of a good one that takes care of the shortcuts/links just for a move within the same system.

For desktop links, if you move (or copy) the entire file structure (the whole tree), for example from C:\ to D:\, the only difference will be that the desktop shortcuts will say C:\<path>\filename and you need them to say D:\<path>\filename. Unless you've got an enormous number of shortcuts on the desktop, it shouldn't take long to manually edit the shortcuts. I've only got about 45 icons on my desktop, but some people might have more.

My suggestion would be that you leave programs that were installed at default locations on C:\. Windows has some (limited) ability to look for associated exe and dll files for some programs, and leaving them in default locations may let things run a little smoother for programs with quite a few "associated files." You would move only the documents, image files, etc created by your progams to the other drive. If you do it this way, you won't need to change the shortcut targets for programs, but probably will still want to change the "Start In" setting (in Properties for each shortcut) that's the default for where the program saves its outputs and where it looks when you need to reopen something.

Right click the icon, and click Properties. The Properties window usually will have a "Shortcut" tab. In the "Shortcut" box, change C:\ to D:\ if you moved the program. In the "Start In" box change C:\ to D:\ if you moved the documents etc for the program to a new drive where you'll be keeping what that the program creates. By NOT USING an automatic "mover program" you have better control of what you choose to move, at the cost of doing a fairly small amount of "cleanup."

The most likely real "clinker" with moving things around is with .htm files. A very large percentage of html files have an "associated folder" with the same filename as the html "document." The folder contains all the "linked in junk" that the "document" needs to display properly. When you download/save html (especially from the web) the save operation automatically changes all the links inside the "document" to point to the folder at the location where both are first saved. If you move either, or even if you move both together, those links will still point to the old location and the html document will be broken. Making even a minor change to the html filename also can often "break things." You can sometimes go through an html and edit the links manually, but that's not often very successful. The better procedure is to open the html "document" in your browser, from the original location, and save from the open document to the new location, but of course you have to do that one file at a time.

The even "very much better" method is to get in the habit of using "Save As" when saving from the web, and save the pages as "Web Archive, single file (.mht)" (the IE choice, the description may be different with other browsers). Instead of the html format that uses links to objects in a subfolder of the folder containing the html document, an mht file has all the linked objects along with the page itself in a single file, and all the links are "local links within the file" so you can move, rename, and about anything else you might want to do without worrying about the file falling apart.

Again, the only reliable way of changing the format for an html file (as for just moving one) is to open the page in your browser and "Save As" using the new format - in a new location if you want it also moved.

Incidentally, I've used the "system image" procedure according to Microsoft's instructions, for both WinXP and Vista. The Vista instructions are essentially identical to the Win7 instructions you linked. I've only had occasion to do an "image restore" recently in one case. The system reported "no image found" on the drive where I'd stored it - as the only thing on the drive.

Microsoft "backups" have had the reputation, since at least Win98, of being "write only." Anyone at Microsoft who needs something recovered just calls their in-house Support people who put back what they want from copies, not images. (All in-house computers there are backed up to the servers, probably still nightly.) Nobody at Microsoft has ever attempted to do a System Restore or Image Restore, and the remote possibility of "restoring" something is only mentioned in passing in any Microsoft help or support descriptions of what it "might be possible to do."

Be aware. A "System Recovery Disk," something slightly different than a "System Image" may be a more useful thing to have, with slightly better likelihood of actually being usable. There'd be no real harm in having one of each.(?)

John