Move SharePoint Search Index Files Location to Another Drive

Again, C:\ is running out of disk space in a SharePoint Farm because search index files are growing! Huh… So, this time, I decided to move SharePoint 2007 index files from C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office Servers\12.0\Data\Office Server\Applications to E:\.

Here are the steps to move the SharePoint search index to another drive:

It’s a good idea to pause the crawling schedules before we proceed with moving the SharePoint index location. After the index has been moved to the new location, we have to resume the crawl that we have paused.

Run the below stsadm in Index Server:
stsadm -o editssp -title sharedservices1 -indexlocation e:\SharePointIndex

or you can run: stsadm -o osearch -indexlocation “E:\SharePointIndex”
This will reset the index and create a new location.

In each query server, run the below command:
stsadm -o osearch -propagationlocation e:\SharePointIndex

If it’s a SharePoint Services (WSS), in the Index server, you can run:
stsadm -o spsearch -indexlocation E:\SharePointIndex

To view what is being indexed and the current location of the Index:
stsadm -o spsearch -action list

now you can delete the old search index file from its old location.

Here is the Technet article: Change the content index location for an index server