![]() Remember, it would be best to move it to a different PHYSICAL drive if possible. Click Move and choose the desired location for your My Documents folder. Right-click on the My Documents folder on your desktop and choose Properties.Ģ. In Windows XP, the process is very similar as above, but you only have to do it for one folder instead of several folders. ![]() Choose a destination for the folder and Windows will begin to move everything over to the new location. Then right-click on the folder you want to move and choose Properties.Ĭlick on the Location tab and then click on the Move button. There you can check the User’s Files box.Īs mentioned above, in Windows 8.1, just click on This PC on the left-hand menu and you’ll see the system folders. If you don’t see the user folder on your desktop, right-click on the desktop, choose Personalize and then click on Change Desktop Icons. In Windows 7, you have to click on your user folder on the desktop or navigate to C:\Users\UserName to see the system folders. The process for moving the system folders in Windows 7/8.1 is the same for both operating systems. Then click the checkbox next to Show Libraries.Īs I mentioned earlier, using libraries is a good alternative in case you don’t want to move a lot of data around from their current locations. To get libraries back in Windows 8.1, click on the View tab and then click Navigation Pane. So instead of seeing Libraries in the left-hand menu in Explorer, you’ll see This PC with links to the system folders (Documents, Pictures, etc). In Windows 8.1, Microsoft suddenly hid the libraries feature for no apparent reason, even though it still exists. Once it has synced the folder to your local computer, you can right-click again and you will see the Include in library option. ![]() To do that, just right-click on the folder and choose Always available offline. You can even include folders in network locations in a library, but you first have to make it available offline. It’ll seem as if the folder is actually located in that folder, where in reality it could be on a totally different disk. This does not copy or move the contents of that folder to the library, it simply creates a shortcut to the folder, but it won’t look like a shortcut. To add a folder to a library, just go to the folder you want to add, right-click on it, choose Include in library and then pick the library you want to add the folder to. Instead of physically moving the system folders to another location, you can simply move your data to wherever you like and then add that folder to one of the special libraries: Documents, Music, Pictures, Video. Using Libraries in Windows 7/8.1īefore we get into the actual steps for moving the different system folders in Windows, let’s talk about libraries as they are a pretty good solution for most people. ![]() Of course, this will not save your data if the entire hard drive fails physically and your My Documents folder is on the same drive, just in a different partition, but there have been many occasions in my time when Windows has become unusable due to a virus, spyware or other calamity of sorts. However, if your data is on the D drive, let’s say, and your Windows partition craps out, you can reinstall a fresh copy of Windows on the C drive and the rest of your data remains intact! For example, if Windows crashes on you one day and you have to perform a reinstall, then all of your data will be lost if you didn’t have a backup. Easy backup and recovery of data in case of Windows crash – The best reason to move the My Documents folder is to better help protect your data. Once I moved the data off, I gave space-hogging Windows more space to live and breathe.Ģ. Free up precious hard drive space on the system partition – With all of the monthly updates for Office and Windows, my C drive was getting close to becoming full! Also, other system files like the paging file, system restore files, and hibernation files are all stored on the system partition. So you might be asking why I would be recommending this? Here are the main two reasons I’ve moved the My Documents folder:ġ. ![]()
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