There may be a time when you want to move the "My Documents" folder to a different location, say on another bigger hard rive in your PC. In Windows 7, this is a very easy task.
Once you navigate to the "My Documents" folder, and look at the properties, you will notice a "Location" tab. Just change the path in the box to where you would like to move the folder, and click the "Move" button. This will work with the "Downloads" folder. There are some folders that you cannot change, but most are changeable. This can help with your backups, by making the Windows 7 System Image smaller.
This is also possible in Windows XP and Vista, just as in Windows 7, but the wording is a little different. Microsoft’s Knowledge Base shows exactly how to do this in XP and Vista. In Vista the folder you can change is in your user folder as Documents.
There are a couple of alternative ways of relocating folders to facilitate separating operating system and content elements. These can help when you have large files or a lot of similar files distributed throughout the drive.
- For Special Folders: copy the folder to a remote location, then make a shortcut to the new location to put in the original folder. You can then delete the original content from the original folder and copy the shortcut to it. To access your files go to the original folder and click the shortcut. Make sure to backup the original content to another device before deleting it. To simplify this further you can add a shortcut to the Favorites Column in Windows explorer.
- For other folders you can do a similar thing but preserving the folder name is optional.
- This technique is also helpful in consolidating some of your highest value content in one directory on a remote for backups and using shortcuts in the locations the content is normally accessed. For example, if you develop spreadsheets, you could have a remote drive G: with a Directory Excel and Folders Sales, Marketing, Shipping. On your C:\My Documents you could create these same Folder names as shortcuts to the G:\Excel Folders. You can then backup G:\Excel and get all the sheets. If you backup C:\ you will get the operating system and not all the content. This may make the System backup and restore simpler and much shorter. This can allow you to find a Sheet without using a lengthy search, as a side benefit.
Of note, it is recommended you take caution when moving these "special" folders to an external drive. If you ever need to re-install Windows 7, it will re-create these folders in their original locations. This may cause preemptive access problems.
For some more information check out this link here
If you have any system questions or concerns, contact the CCS Retail Systems Support Department at 800-672-4806 or email_us.
-Bryan 