Moving "My Documents"

Gudzilla · 21 Jan 2013

Hello forum;
I have a question about setting up a new SSD. I have installed the drive, and to save space I would like to move all the documents, pictures, music and other folders into my previous HDD.
I have seen a couple of posts and tutorials on the subject, some seem to say moving the most used folders is the best, while others say moving the entire user profile is the way to go. That route seems pretty complicated for me.
As far as moving say "My Documents". I have two versions of this folder. The version which was on the HDD that I had been using, and the version which was created when I installed Windows again. How do I move both of these to the same location? and how much of the excess from the old Documents folder can I safely delete? I see a lot of folders that are just a long string of characters, and other items I dont remember ever saving.
And if I can merge these two versions, does it make sense to create a separate partition for them?

Bongo · 21 Jan 2013

Option 2 of this tutorial User Folders - Change Default Location should help you out.

You can move just documents, music, videos, etc. or you could move the entire user folder it's really your choice, I just recently did this and I moved everything except the Desktop and AppData folders to a different drive using the above tutorial and it worked flawlessly.

I'm not sure about the files with the long string of characters are they in your user folder or your documents folder?

Jerry

Gudzilla · 22 Jan 2013

Here is what My documents looks like in the old system. I realize some of these are related to software I'vd only installed on the old system, but some look like jibberish to me. How do I tell which I can remove?

Bongo · 22 Jan 2013

Gudzilla said:

and how much of the excess from the old Documents folder can I safely delete? I see a lot of folders that are just a long string of characters, and other items I dont remember ever saving.
And if I can merge these two versions, does it make sense to create a separate partition for them?

Gudzilla said:

Here is what My documents looks like in the old system. I realize some of these are related to software I'vd only installed on the old system, but some look like jibberish to me. How do I tell which I can remove?

What I would do would be to go through your old My Documents folder and anything that was important or you know you need I would copy and paste into your new My Documents folder, If you don't already I would rename the old My Documents folder to something new and then just keep it for a short while to make sure everything is running okay and that you are not missing anything.
Depending on how big your old hard drive is you could make a small partition and store it there that would be your personal choice.

Jerry

Gudzilla · 23 Jan 2013

Thanks for your reply
Ok, I’m ready to do that, ready to move my documents. I am thinking it would be best to create a partition on the old HDD to start putting these documents into, but I am running into this problem.
Disk management says the drive has 909.45 GB capacity, and 187.64 GB free space. When I go to shrink it so I can create the partition the response comes back as saying there is only 5396 MB available to shrink.
I have been following the tutorial for shrinking the volume but the numbers don’t add up. What might be going wrong here?

braddersz · 23 Jan 2013

I've done this alot of times, for clients. However, I usully do i a different way to the suggestions above.

Have a read here:

How to Change User Profile Default Location in Windows 7

Bongo · 23 Jan 2013

Using Windows built-in disk management sometimes not the best to use, look at this tutorial Partition Wizard : Use the Bootable CD and download Partition Wizard and burn it to a CD then look at Option 3 it explains how to shrink the volume on the left side of C but is the same principle just use the slider on the right side on the drive you want to shrink. Read the warning about backing up.

Jerry

Kari · 23 Jan 2013

I like the complete Users folder with all its subfolders to be located on a separate drive. Not only the documents, pics and music folders but also AppData, Desktop, simply everything.

This is the easiest way to it, letting Windows simply to change internal environment variables with sysprep: User Profiles - Create and Move During Windows 7 Installation

Kari