Windows 7: How Move My Documents? MS Has Created Nightmare

[TomBrooklyn]

1. Is there two My Documents or one?

In the library, there is a:

Documents/My Documents

and a

Computer/C:/Users/{Username}/My Documents

Are they both the same?

If you redirect one to another hard drive, will they both go there?



2. There is a padlock icon on my "Username" under Users. Why is that? Is this what is called my profile? What parts of this make sense to move to the other hard drive with my data? What parts, if any, are better left where they are on the C drive?


3. Under Documents/My Documents, Folders are Music, Pictures, and Videos. Under C:/Username/My Documents, folders are My Music, My Pictures, and My Videos. The names are different. So are those the same folders?


4. Under Documents/My Documents, My Music is a folder under Music, along with Public Music. There is also a Public Pictures and Public Video. Is there any significance to this folder structure? Is there any ingrained structural significance or dependancies to the "Public" Documents folders in the operating system, or can I just delete them? (Are they meant to be documents by the user versus documents from others such as found on the internet, etc?)


5. All of these folders like Music seem to be on the same folder level as My Documents, rather than as subfolders of My Documents as they are in XP. Is that right?


All I want to do is shift My Documents and all data to a separate hard drive. Microsoft seems to have made what ought to be a simple task into a preprogramed confusing mess. I just need to understand this whole folder structure so I can proceed.

 

[EarthDog]

1. 1 AFAIK. IIRC. test it and find out. Put a different file in each and drill down to see what you get.

2. All that padlock tells you is that it is owned by the SYSTEM group.
http://social.technet.microsoft.com...y/thread/16474fcf-688b-4eae-88f4-804306bafc0f

3. See the answer to question #1... its the same question really.

4. Public documents are just that, available to all users on the system vs the others under USER are specific to that user.

5. They are still on the same level.

 

[medo145]

If you want to check where your docs/pics/vids are located, fire up regedit and go to this location

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders

You can see where those folders are redirected to and you can also change the location from there.

5. Music, Videos, and Pictures are not located inside the documents folder anymore, instead they are all located in the root of your user folder.

 

[realmadrid12]

Windows 6 and greater (Kernal that is) use a logical folder system. Meaning you can move your folders around yet they appear to stay the same.

Here is a link on how to move My documents but you can do it the same way for all of the other folders in your %userprofile%

Edit: forgot the link http://headstrongfarm.hubpages.com/hub/Windows-7_-_Moving_My_Documents

 

[Knufire]

The Documents is a library, not a folder. It's simply a menu that you can add multiple folders too and view all their contents in one window. Your files are actually located in C:/Users/{Username}/My Documents.

This might explain it better. I opened the second window by clicking on the "1 location" link that's underlined.



As you can see, I've moved my documents to L:\Documents, which is a partition on my HDD since I wanted to keep them off my SSD. All I did was remove the C:\Users\[Username]\Documents location, and add the other directory. Usage is the complete same, but the files are now stored on a different drive.

 

[habbajabba]

Easiest thing to do is to simply not use the c drive location. I already have a docs folder on a separate drive and after having installed windows countless times and now dual booting with linux, I fail to see the need to move a basically empty location which I never put stuff in anyway.