
Moving Documents and Settings folder onto second hard disk?I recently purchased an external HDD that I'm intending to use as a file server. My question is how to move the Documents and Settings folder from my two Windows XP machines onto this network drive without causing Windows to break beyond repair. Thanks. You should be able to move the "target" of your "My Documents" folder on each machine. "My Documents" is actually a redirection that is done within the Windows Explorer shell, and is easy to reassign on the face of it. I have not tried this on a network drive, so there are no guarantees. I have successfully reassigned My Documents to what is (to me) a more accessible directory on my hard drive. Here's what you can do: 1) Set up your network and your network drive. Make sure that it is assigned a particular letter for each machine. (Assign permanent drive letters under Control Panel --> Administrative Tools --> Computer Management --> Disk Management. This should work for network drives as well. Someone correct me if I'm wrong; again, I haven't done this before. 2) On your computers, open Windows Explorer. From My Computer, right-click on My Documents and select properties. The first thing that pops up is a "target folder location" screen. Select "move" and pick the desired folder on your networked drive (i.e., computer 1's documents, computer 2's documents, etc.). You may have to physically copy everything over, but then it will be on the networked drive and everything should work smoothly. That is, in the future, Windows will go to the target location whenever you look in "My Documents" It is possible that you can even do #2 without bothering with #1. You may wish to try. If so, make sure you assign a specific name/letter to your network drive that is somewhere down the line (H or so) so that Windows won't get confused if you are using USB drives or flash cards on occasion. As always, back up first. Also, here are two useful articles to read too: Thanks to Jeff Lawley for his help on this.
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Never miss another useful Q&A article again! Subscribe to AskDaveTaylor with Google Reader. I run an enterprise network and have My Documents redirection enabled for everyone, across the network to a file server. So long as you have the network capacity to handle your needs, it works great. With the typical Word, Excel, and other relatively small files, it works great. If you have extremely large files in your My Documents, like videos and things of that nature that are several hundred MB or more, you probably won't be too satisfied with the results. You don't want to move the entire Documents and Settings folder, as that contains your whole user profile. It is possible to implement roaming user profiles, but in a two PC network, it certainly isn't worth the hassle (and would only create some major headaches for you). Posted by: Chris Buechler at November 14, 2005 9:58 PMTo change the location of a SPECIAL folder AND simultaneously move the files, the folder(s) to the new location and select "Move Here" SPECIAL FOLDERS for google searches: the original question was how to move the documents and settings folder and was not answered. Posted by: jonathan at January 19, 2006 6:30 PMTo move the entire Documents and settings folders is relatively simple ... just a little fiddly Just moving My Documents is easy enough ... the problem is - when you only move my documents onto another drive or partition and then find yourself in a crash and burn situation ... you preserve your data but lose your settings cookies, favourites ... in fact everything that makes your machine yours. So you have three options .... When starting fresh Then either burn a new install disc with winnt.sif added to the i386 folder .... of copy it to a floppy ... boot from CD ... as soon as you see press any key to boot ... hit a key and IMMEDIATELY push the floppy into the drive. Remember when you start - create and format two partitions - if you don't the install still runs ... but windows won't boot up. If you already have a working system .... Visit http://bladesdev.com/ reboot .... and away you go Posted by: Whitey at March 29, 2006 7:24 AMBecareful when you replace %USERPROFILE%\...... It shouldn't be simply replaced by d:\documents and settings\ as %USERPROFILE% contains the user name for each user ... should replace by d:\documents and settings\%USERNAME%\ Also will need to replace entries containing good luck :) Hello, I have 2 drives c and g. My c is getting full. Can I use part of g drive as an extension of c somehow??? Thanks Posted by: raj at December 9, 2006 6:55 PMWhat if i can't find a KB236621 file? greetings, why does this site popup everytime I hit ctrl+enter in flash 8? Posted by: seth at January 10, 2007 3:02 PM> What if i can't find a KB236621 file? klik hier: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/236621 I am interested in inserting tressy jean austin's document on MSN. Can you help me? Posted by: Tressy Jean Austn at May 7, 2007 5:14 PMthank you very much for having this site chock full of information... I couldn't remember the single most important value to change to have the documents and settings folder on another drive, but I got it now! thank you much Posted by: Mike Anderson at January 1, 2008 1:55 PM"PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD SOMONE HELP ME, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE.. 2 months ago, i put a new hd into my pc... i slaved the old drive so the old drive is now D: ... by the way im running xp pro sp2. Windows
I AM loged into an admin account, so i should be able to delete these stupid folders. I used third party things, like File Unlocker.. with no luck at all I emailed mircosoft about 10 times regarding this,, either gettting no replyes, or usless replys... I physicly wrote 2 letters to microsoft.. no reply... ive looked at 100`s upon 100`s of forums online, trying 100`s of differnt methods of deleting these folders... NO LUCK this is now into the 2nd month of this nightmare. i cant work out how to do this, im angry, in perticular with mircosoft, im fed up, and i dont know what to do short of formatting the drive (witch for other reasons is out of the question) the last thing i tryed was this (as directed by somone at mircosoft) sounds simple enough, tho.. if u read it carfully ull soon find out that the information there is not right.... 3: 3. Click Advanced, and then click the Owner tab. so first of all, step 2, "click OK on the Security message (if one appears)." PLEASE.. i need some help with this asap.. as im about to littlery chuck this pc out the dam window.
Ps. sorry for the spelling and attitude, but as u now relise, after 2 months of this, im left very very angery and fed up with the whole thing... all i dam well want to do is delete 3 folders on MY OWN pc,.. how dam complicated must this be???" Posted by: pANGAEA at April 16, 2008 8:42 AMPangaea Make a working folder on your desktop. Copy all the folders from the second drive you want to keep to this folder. Then reformat the second drive. Then move the folders back. You may have to do this in safe mode. Good luck Pangaea, There is a great utility out there called "Linux" (tounge in check ;). Just insert a Live CD from OpenSuSE, Simply MEPIS, or Knoppix. Boot up in Linux and go to the File Manager (Dolphin or Konqueror in root or superuser mode). Find out those files on the D drive that Windows will not let you touch and proceed to delete them. If you ever want to find out what is really going on in System folders, pop in Linux and browse to your heart's content. Posted by: RKD at July 7, 2008 9:21 AMPangaea
Good information, thanks Posted by: mopheat at November 29, 2008 2:04 AMi got a new 32'' monitor and i can't get a full size screen picture on my pogo games what can i do 2 change this. Posted by: goldie at December 15, 2008 9:59 PMI am downloading recipies for baking cakes and decorating cookies. The files contain videos. I want the target to be Iomega Disk G not the recent documents folder. It will take up too much space on my hard drive. Please tell me how to do this. I am a novice at the computer. Please be specific. Posted by: M Barbara Haas at February 25, 2009 12:00 PMFor Windows 2000 see Microsoft's KB236621: For Windows XP see Microsoft's KB314843: I've written an easy to follow paper on moving Documents and Settings to a new drive: http://www.dynode.net/~rjw/?pid=2 Posted by: Russell at April 20, 2009 12:18 AMPLEASE HELP!!! I followed the instructions Whitey gave to move my documents and settings folder and now my comp is all messed up!!! I can still boot, but all my personal data has been moved so the comp cant see it!!! PLEASE HELP ME UNDO THIS! I know in retrospect I should have made the undo file! ='( PS I really don't understand any of how this all works! I just wanted to move my data off my C drive! But I'll gladly leave my documents and settings files there if that's what it will take to fix my comp! Posted by: Paul at October 11, 2009 9:24 PMI have a lot to say, but ...
I do have a comment, now that you mention it!
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