[kevvyb]

Can anyone help....?

I have tried moving the default locations of the Vista special folders now a few times by using the move location route. All seems to go well until at some point, something goes wrong or I do something wrong and I find a whole host of files being copied over when I know there is nothing in the default folder location as yet. These files seem to have nothing to do with the folder I am moving.

What is happening? Trying to work it out and put everything back where it was does not see very straightforward. On this I much preferred XP. Right click myDocuments, Move, Browse, OK. Done. The whole lot. This way of doing it in Vista is a complete pain in the arse in comparison.

For now I've given up and am just leaving them where they are, after another reinstall (no repair options as this is a recovery disk). But I don't want to be beaten by this. So can anyone suggest where I may be going wrong, if I am...?

[4D(Fordy(Ford) Ollie]

Why would you want to?

You'll run in to loads of trouble later on if the User folders are not where they're meant to be.

Just create a new folder wherever you want it, change the icon to the My Documens one if you're that fussed, and keep you're things in there.

But some programs will have a heart attack when they try to install if certain Windows folders are not in the specified route.

[kevvyb]

Just what I always did with XP, two partitions on disk 0, one for system and other for data, then mirror of that data to a partition on another hard drive.

Reasons....?
In case of drive failure have up to the minute copy of my data on disk 1 (but could do that leaving data folders in default location, agreed).

Quicker scanning of system drive without having to scan all data (but now I think about it, can also achieve same thing with schedules in virus scanner etc).

Quicker defrag of system drive without having to defrag all data , doesn't seem to need as much defrag as system itself.

So now I think about it, maybe not very many solid reasons.....

[4D(Fordy(Ford) Ollie]

Ok, what I'm suggesting is that you create a New Folder on Part 2 Disk 0 (or whichever you data storage is on) call it My Docs or whatever the hell you fancy, and store your stuff in there.

That sorts scanning and defrag, although it will make very small difference to defrag time to be honest.

Next do one of two things.

Either:
1) Copy it over to Disk 1 on a regular basis manually, or schedule it to do it for you.
Or
2) Sync it with an identically named folder on the other drive so it updates in real time.



Don't go moving the default folders, as I said before, say you install an application, and it wants to create a directory in Users\[Name]\My Documents\ and store some important files there.

If it's not there, it can't, sometimes it's not a problem, it will just prompt you and ask where to save them, however it depends on the installer, so leave original files there for this purpose, and just create new ones elsewhere.

[kevvyb]

Okay, Thanks for that reply. Am having a rethink and will consioder what you say. Must say that my experience with installers though is zero problems and I ahve been running XP like this for a number of years.

Is the special folder location in Vista and 7 any more important to installers?

[4D(Fordy(Ford) Ollie]

Shouldn't have thought so, the basic folder layout hasn't changed much, other than the route for the user folders which has been renamed and jiggled about a bit, and works slightly differently.

I think it's mostly games, however some software installs or saves files to Users\[User]\AppData\[Prog Folder]\

So that's where the problems can appear.


Nothing wrong with scheduling a boot-time or log-off backup of those files to a different disc though, or syncing them even with just the built in Windows "Briefcase".