Moving My Documents folder

MothballsWallet

Hey everyone, I've just had a look at the Microsoft Knowledge Base article (which is here) about moving your My Documents folder to another location, and I know that you can specify whether you want it to move the files for you or leave them where they are.

However, has anyone used it because I can't see any reference to whether this updates the Windows Registry to point to the new location of My Documents so I don't need to reset all my applications' settings?

I'm running Windows XP Pro with SP3 installed.

Quiet_Spark

If you move the location correctly, there will be no issues at all.

Mr_Toad

As above but be aware there is some software out there that has the old Microsoft default location hard coded rather than using the registry. It caused me a problem when I tried to move all my data on to a separate drive from the OS and found some files still using the old location.

I can't recall which software at the moment because I've since moved to a Mac via Linux. I'm sure someone will be along soon who knows.

I did look into it at the time and discovered that one reason given was that it was done for support reasons, that is, everyone's files were in the same place and not spread out all over the PC making support easier.

Move your folders but keep an eye on things just in case.

Toxteth_OGrady

You could achieve it by creating NTFS links between the default and new location, although XP will need a couple of registry tweaks.

http://schinagl.priv.at/nt/hardlinkshellext/hardlinkshellext.html

MothballsWallet

Thanks to you all - I'll be trying that over the weekend to move My Documents to my external hard drive that I bought with my Christmas gift money

Steve059

After a bit of a scare, when I thought that I might have to re-install Windows, I've just partitioned my laptop hard drive to create a virtual drive for my data.

I created a second "My Documents" folder on the new drive for programs like Word & Excel to use and left the original folder on the C: drive for Windows, etc. to use.

To change the desktop and Start menu icons, right-click on either of them. The new window should open in the Target tab. Change the drive letter. Apply. OK.

PS. I'm still using XP Pro' and I used Norton Partition Magic 8 to create the new partition.

spud17

MothballsWallet wrote: »

Thanks to you all - I'll be trying that over the weekend to move My Documents to my external hard drive that I bought with my Christmas gift money

I don't think I'd want to do it that way. Too much chance of it going wrong.
A second partition, as per Steve059, is a much better idea.
By all means copy them to your external HD as a simple backup, it will be better than nothing, if you do not already have a backup routine in place.

esuhl

I always move the default location of "My Documents" on my Windows installations. It's worked fine on Windows XP and 7, and I've never had any problems. All the software I use has happily picked up the new location, so I assume the registry gets correctly updated when you make the change.

I keep (extra) backups when doing stuff like this, but I've never had a problem.

I agree that it probably isn't a great idea to move "My Documents" to a removable device, though... unless it's going to be connected all the time. And if you're going to do that, it'd be better to install the drive in the machine.

bluesnake

I'm with esuhl spud13, and would not move My Documents either to a removable device.

I may however use something like FreeFileSync, but as of yet have not tried MS SyncToy, to copy files to an external drive.

StuC75

+1 for the Internal Drive

Unless its a desktop and will always be connected and available (which kind of does away with the external aspect).. Any scope for Internal Drive or parititions so documents away from OS?