Move That My Documents Folder
I just migrated over to a newer computer – a task which I loathe, the only thing fueling it is the anticipation of faster computing. Still, it’s now a whole lot faster, easier and better than it was before. On my PC, I make tons of changes from simple background colors and font size to editing the registry.
One of the most important things to me is to move the My Documents folder. Why? Because my hard drive in several partitions and I do not like to keep data in the same partition as the operating system (C:/). This way, if the operating system becomes corrupt or I just feel like it need re-installing, I can do it quickly without copying, moving a bunch of stuff or losing data.
But what if you already have files inside your My Documents folder? Super easy. Right click on My Documents and click on Properties. In the dialog box, you’ll see a target directory path. Click on Move…
Select the directory of your choice and click OK. Windows will do everything for you. Be warned, this could take a long time if you have a lot of files in there. So make sure you do it only when you’re not going to be actively working on your computer.
Do You Want A Hands-Free Business?
Then get this guide to help you systemize your business so you'll have more time working on your business.
Hey! I want to make sure you know what you're getting here. In addition to the guide, you will also receive our memo that includes special offers, announcements and of course actionable information.
Lynette, I didn’t know it could be moved! I’m tempted to move mine to my external hard drive but then I would have to have the hd with me all the time. Great tip!
They sure can Tsoniki. I’ve always done that with my computers.
Where do you suggest moving it to Lynette?
Anywhere you wish but I wouldn’t move it to external drive. Like Tsoniki says, you’ll then have to keep the drive with the computer almost always and it can be slower accessing and saving your files too.
My hard drive is partitioned into several segments. In less techie speak that simply means I have the drive sectioned off into smaller segments. So instead of one huge C: drive that’s 250 GBs I have 4 drives C:/, D:/, E:/ and F:/ of different sizes.
I also used to have two hard drives in one computer so the My Documents got moved to the 2nd hard drive that was used for 100% file storage only.
I prefer to have data on a seperate drive, not just a seperate partition (ok, thats probably only possible with desktops).
The reason is that if you have it on different drives the read/write speed is better compared to having data and operating system on the same drive where the read/write heads has to switch from part where the op system is to the part where the data resides.
Using two drives lets you access data and system simultaneously.
That’s a good point and very true as well Tom. On one of my older PC’s I had a very small hard drive as the master – it contained only the operating system and everything else – data was saved to the 2nd internal hard drive which is much, much larger. Eventually, I may go back to that.