Vista special folders default locations

[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...?

 

[Russel1]

What special folder do you want to move? The documents folder?

 

[kevvyb]

Russell

Russel

Was looking at all of them but have since come tot he conclusion that this does not have as many benefits as I originally though. Given that it seems to be much harder than on XP, I am going to leave the data on the system drive.

Thanks

 

[Russel1]

If I want the system files on a different partition or drive, I usually install it there to begin with. I have been know to do some strange things. There was a number of years that I would install the OS in such a way that there was no C: drive. It took some fooling around with the hard disks and relettering the drives, I think. Maybe editing the boot files as well. I think the last time I did that was with WinNT.

These days I do a conventional install, then move 'Documents' to another hard disk. I thought maybe that is what you were trying to do. Undoubtedly, you know how to do that. But, it doesn't hurt to check and see if I could help.

Wish I was more helpful.

 

[kevvyb]

Hi again. I really think I have not explained what I want to do very clearly.

I would like to clean install windows 7 onto C
Then move the default location (i.e. where the folders on C point too) of the special folders from that installation to partition D.

Operating system separated from all documents/pictures/music etc

The reason I like to do this is that it gives me another copy of my data, independent of the operating system partition as well as mirrored back up to internal drive and incremental back up to external drives.

For me it's all just layers of protection in case disaster strikes. The more options one has the better. Recently having had both laptop and desktop hardware go belly up within weeks of each other makes me think this a very good idea.


I don't know if that's as you understood my original question but I hope it is a bit clearer now....?

BTW I'm now doing this on my own installation of Windows 7 RC. The Vista system for my friend is all up and running again minus his data that is!!