Windows 8 - Moving Users Folder from SSD to HDD - "local volumes are required to complete the operation", cannot complete system restore

I am trying to move C:\Users (SSD) to B:\Users (HDD) using the following tutorial on a clean install of Windows 8 -> upgraded to 8.1 straight away: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.itnota.com/move-users-directory-to-a-different-drive-in-windows-8/

They are mapped in the following way:

SSD - C:\ in Explorer, D:\ in Command Prompt

HDD - B:\ in Explorer, E:\ in Command Prompt

I tried mapping using the following commands:

robocopy /copyall /mir /xj D:\Users E:\Users (no failures)
rmdir /S /Q D:\Users (worked fine)

Until I got to the following issue here:

mklink /J D:\Users B:\Users
(linking command line source to Windows explorer target)

B:\ is a normal, local, NTFS, non-networked drive, however I just kept getting the following error:

"local volumes are required to complete the operation"

No tutorials have mentioned this as a potential error and any results appear to be about networked drives. I mistakenly tried mapping to E:\Users after this, thinking I should map to the command prompt drive listing rather than the explorer listing as I thought that's what had caused my error. This led to:

1. 'User Profile Service' error - "User profile service failed the sign-in - user profile cannot be loaded"

2. Trying to copy E:\Users (B:\Users) back to D:\Users (C:\Users) after using rmdir to remove the failed D:\Users link. C:\Users is back in place, but I still get the User Profile Service Error. I believe this is because the C:\Documents and Settings junction to C:\Users is now missing, and I cannot recreate this as it says 'file already exists' when I try:

   mklink /J "D:\Users" "C:\Documents and Settings"

   If I could get this back I think I could log in again.

3. I booted from recovery disk (Windows 8.1 ISO I downloaded from DreamSpark) and for at least five attempts I received this error: "To use system restore you must specify which windows installation to restore"

4. After finally being able to access system restore point I made immediately before attempting this for both drives, seemingly randomly after a number of reboot attempts, I am now receiving the following:

   "System restore did not complete successfully. An unspecified error occured during system restore 0x800700b7"

EDIT: My system restore did complete successfully, contradictory to the error message. Only found this out because I missed the window to boot to disk and tried to log on out of habit...

I am at a loss. I thought if I messed this up as I have not done this before that having the recovery disk and a system restore point would prevent me from ending up in this situation, but apparently not! I understand mapping to E:\Users instead of B:\Users is the cause of this, but it doesn't explain my inability to carry out System Restore.

It's looking like I will have to do a clean reinstall but is there any way I can map these once and for all? This seems like so much effort for something so commonly needed.

No, use the User State Migration Tool from Microsoft! You're making this more complicated than it needs to be!

In fact, the EASIEST thing is the windows easy transfer tool, its built on the same technology, but it's designed for end users.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/products/features/windows-easy-transfer