MS Outlook - moving data to 2nd HD....

[#1]

For at least the last 2 PC builds, I've been running Outlook with the main .pst file on a 2nd (data only) HD. All works great, until I have to rebuild the PC - then on re-installation of the Outlook client, it goes and downloads all "new" messages it finds on the server (POP3 to a gmail account, where I don't delete the mail off the gmail server, leaving it on there as a backup)...... Ongoing "new" messages are of course just the real new ones - "new" ones after a rebuild are ALL messages, as the rebuild has caused the PC to forget which messages it has already downloaded (into the inbox of the .pst).  Previous re-builds were against the gmail account when it was quite small, so only a few "duplicate" emails to deal with......  Basically, whilst I moved the .pst data file to the 2nd HD, it seems that the config files that retain and record the current checkpoint as to which which emails have already been downloaded, and therefore which are "new" on the gmail account and need to be downloaded, is located somewhere on the C: drive - and therefore gets destroyed/reset during a re-build.
I'm about to do a clean upgrade/install of Win 7 over the existing Win XP build, which will of course include then installing Outlook afresh - and the gmail account now has over 20,000 emails in the inbox.... and so I don't fancy manually filtering though these looking for duplicates/new ones.....
So - anyone know how to move(/re-point/whatever) not only the .pst data file to a location on the 2nd HD, but also the relevant/associated config files that maintain the record(s) of which emails have been downloaded from the POP3 server?
Thanks,
P.

[#2]

An alternative approach might be to set up a folder in Gmail for the read mail (I think i gmail folders are called labels) and move all your read mail to the folder/label.
Then when outlook goes there it should not find any old material.
Might be worth a try.

[#3]

Bit the bullit and did this yesterday......
In the end, I simply made sure I was up to date on POP3 retrieval from Gmail, then cleared out my Inbox in my Outlook client (moving all mail to a temporary ".pst"), disabled all rules, did my clean Win7 install and then re-installed Outlook 2003 - although I had 22,030 messages (936MB) on Gmail, it only actually downloaded the last 30 days worth - can't recall how many messages, but only around 16MB. I then simply deleted the entire inbox (after checking for *very new* messages), and all back to normal.
Must admit I'm not sure about gmail's labels and POP3 - if I send an email from within gmail, it's gmail labelled as "sent" and appears in gmail's "Sent Mail" list - but then appears as a new message in my Outlook inbox when I do a POP3 retrieval - as if gmail's mail is a single repository, and internally they use labels to list in inbox, sent, etc....
The 30 days wasn't as big a download as I expected, and I guess the lesson is that I should keep my (Outlook) inbox clearer......  (and work out how to migrate all my old archive ".pst"'s, so that I can start using Mozilla Thunderbird instead.......!!!)
Thanks,
P.

[#4]

One thing I forgot to suggest (I've not been well).. Virtual Machines.
Saves you the agro of drive partitioning, installing boot loaders, corrupting partitions etc.. and you can run one OS as a VM inside the other. Search google images for VMWare for a quick idea.
It's much easier, quicker and smarter than messing about with partitions (old school idea for pre-VM times). Honestly, VM's are the way forward. I started using VMWare about 3 - 4 years ago. I've not had a dual boot system since then.

[#5]

Must admit, I nearly went with a VM, just for "portability" of the Outlook installation and it's "OS tied" data - and really don't know why I didn't, as I'd been running a couple of test VMs under MS Virtual PC on the XP system that I was installing over, and luckily the version of Win7 that I had available to install was a Student Edition which is Win7 Pro - which of course has "XP Mode", or basically a free licensed copy of XP that can be run as as VM under that installation of Win7......
Even though my Outlook problem is sorted, I'll probably regret not going a VM route - although of course in the future, to run an XP VM under another OS (having moved on from this Win7 installation....    ), there might have been a need to have a spare XP license available to run for the VM - but I'm probably just making excuses now, as I didn't go that route....!!
At work (a school - so not bad in the technology department....), we run an Intel chassis with 4 hardware hosts, and around 16 VMs across them - all (unfortunately...) MS based servers......  My concern with virtualisation is always the resilience of the base hardware and the facilities available in the VM manager (or "Hardware Host OS") to move resources (e.g. CPUs, disk space, etc.) around as and when needed.
I assume you're just talking about your use of VMs in a home environment - perhaps running some (Windows and Linux?) servers, and clients with different OS (or different versions of OS - XP, Win7, etc.) - so as a matter of interest, can I ask if there's anything special about the hardware platform that you're using - and what base OS you're running all the various VMs under (as that's the critical one, that you need to know is stable, etc.)?
Thanks,
P.