Changing location of "My Documents" does not work

Gandolf · 14 Jan 2015

I made a 100GB partition on my C drive (This partition is the E drive) to house all of my documents, pictures etc. I first made all the folders corresponding to my person files (E:/Users/My Name/My Documents, E:/Users/My Name/My Pictures, etc. ).

I then right clicked the My Documents directory in my C drive (this is the one that is currently holding all of my documents). I went under the Location tab and moved the location towards E:/Users/My Name/My Documents. I basically tried to copy C:/Users/My Name/My Documents to E:/Users/My Name/My Documents. I thought that all had gone well until I saw that C:/Users/My Name/My Documents still existed! I wanted to move all of my user data to my E drive to free up space but it's not working, can anyone help? Thanks

EDIT: Sorry if this was the wrong sub-forum but I didn't know where to put it and it has to deal with storage.

Brink · 14 Jan 2015

Hello Gandolf, and welcome to Seven Forums.

If you like, I would recommend to restore your Documents folder back to C using OPTION TWO in the tutorial below.

User Folders - Restore Default Location

Afterwards, create a new folder on E named whatever you like, move all your files into this new folder, include the new folder to your Documents library, and make the new folder in the library the default save location.

This way you don't have to move your Documents folder from C and risk breaking it, have all your files saved on E, and be able to access them all from your Documents library.

Hope this helps for now, :)
Shawn

Gandolf · 14 Jan 2015

Brink said:

Hello Gandolf, and welcome to Seven Forums.

If you like, I would recommend to restore your Documents folder back to C using OPTION TWO in the tutorial below.

User Folders - Restore Default Location

Afterwards, create a new folder on E named whatever you like, move all your files into this new folder, include the new folder to your Documents library, and make the new folder in the library the default save location.

This way you don't have to move your Documents folder from C and risk breaking it, have all your files saved on E, and be able to access them all from your Documents library.

Hope this helps for now, :)
Shawn

After doing this, will I assume I will be able to delete the C:/Users/My Name/My Documents folder? The whole point of moving all of these files to the E drive was to gain more space on my C drive.

Also, is there a way to move my AppData folder from C:/Users/My Name/AppData without having to reinstall/reconfigure any programs?

Slartybart · 14 Jan 2015

Brink has already provided excellent instructions, I'm only adding a comment about the move location process that I've experienced

I think the dialog to move the location can be a little confusing.

The [Move] button lets you choose the location or you can type the location in the box above the buttons

Once the new location is in the box, the [OK] or [Apply] button actually performs the work.
I've hit the move button on a few occasions myself and thought "that's not what I wanted to do" silly me. :)

Slartybart · 14 Jan 2015

If the process completes normally, you won't have a folder on C:\ to delete, the move location should take care of that for you.

I don't recommend moving AppData - the reasons are too difficult to explain (I don't understand all of the reasons)

edit: Most of the space is used by Documents, Music, Pictures, and Videos.

You can move application folders specific (IE, WLM) individually in the options for that application.
Your TEMP folder can be set in an environment variable.

Brink · 14 Jan 2015

Gandolf,

Yep, the instructions I posted will have your files in the new folder on E: as you wanted, and you can leave your "C:\Users\(user-name)\Documents" folders empty.

As Bill posted above, I would not recommend to move your AppData folder. This contains all your profile and program settings, and moving it could corrupt it all.

whs · 14 Jan 2015

I use a slightly different twist.

I move all my own folders to the new location but not those that were generated by the system or by programs. And I leave the folders on C as default folders.

That way I have a clear separation of my own data and system generated data. Since the system generated data is usually very small, that is not really an inconvenience - it is just a cleaner split.

Gandolf · 15 Jan 2015

Thanks for all the replies! I'll try what you guys said and get back to here when I'm done.