Anderton
I'm curious why you want to change the location. SONAR knows where to find it, and it doesn't take up much space.

When loading in different presets (that I have saved to an external drive) it is very cumbersome to have to navigate from the default location (when I click on the open folder) over to the location of ones that I have saved on my external. Multiply this by 48 tracks and you'll see why I want to change the location.

I understand what your saying but with each preset is approx. 500-800KB each, my pro channel presets folder is only 20MB  (there's over 75 presets in there.)
I have 3 other sub folders plus another 300 or so on my D drive I barely use.
 
so the registry edit will work, however you may find creating a few sub folders and copying those presets from an external drive to your PC default location a better method than registry editing. though that choice is completely yours.

Yeah, I really don't want to mess with the registry. Moving my presets over to the default would be fine however I fear I will have to do this too often. 
I record on a setup at my church and make presets according to the service layout and bring those presets home to my home studio setup. I do this twice a week and love to try and churn these out as quick as possible so the more I can streamline the workflow the better I can achieve this. 
 
Just thought I was overlooking something. 
Thanks for all the replies. 

I see, so it's a matter of transfer between systems. Probably the junction option would be best for you. I've used it to call samples from libraries on external drives, and it's neither difficult nor dangerous (unlike playing with the registry).

might be able to do some small networking. seeing as they are not that big. just set up a network and update as you see fit. what ever you end up doing, best of luck with it. I don't blame you for not wanting to reg edit. this is a fairly simple one but I tend to stay away from reg edits when ever possible. it reminds me of playing Jinga. one wrong move and its falling down.