Why are files in so many places?

Sorry if this has been asked before-I did a search but didn't find it. I just got windows 7 after having xp. It was a new install on a new hard drive. I have 32 bit. I use carbonite so I did a selective restore. Now it seems like some files are in more than one place. I'm not talking about the libraries-I understand how those work. I'm talking about going to my c drive. For instance I have home videos that I am in the process of copying to dvd from vhs tapes. I ran Auslogics dupe finder and it shows them in 3 different locations. C:users:owner:video (I know I don't have all the symbols in there-this is just to give an idea of where) and also C:users:owner:documents:my vidoes and also c:documents and settings:owner:videos. So I selected files that were in the 2nd and 3rd location to delete and when I did, they also deleted from the first location. So are they not in all 3? If so why does Auslogics show that they are duplicates? I am restoring them now but I would like to avoid duplicates because it only makes my carbonite backup bigger than it should be. The same is happening with other files too. Are they all just mirrored with different paths somehow?

Not that I know of but I have it all set for full sharing because of our home network. Also I forgot to mention what prompted me to check in the first place. Carbonite is backing up a certain file but I was sure it was already backed up. So I check and sure enough, there is a green dot indicating that it's backed up. But then I went to another file path and found the same file but not yet backed up (but it is in the queue to be backed up). So Carbonite is backing them up separately. But if I delete one from one folder, it also deletes in the other folder. This is so confusing.

ahhh my head is spinning. OK so I think I understand. I understood the libraries to be places that point to the actual location but thought that anything beyond that was actually in the locations shown in the path. I set my entire c drive so that I could alter/copy/etc files from any folder on the other computers but is there a better way? My kids do lessons on the other computers (and this one too) but since carbonite only backs up this one, I transfer their backup files for lessons to this computer and then it backs them up. Sometimes I also transfer other files from one to the other on the network.

OK how do I set it all back to the default? Then I can selectively set permissions on certain folders that the kids use for backups?

thanks so much-I have been stressing over this for a month now (since I got my new HD).

I found this-is it safe to do it this way or should I do it manually?
How to reset all Windows 7 or Vista Security settings to its default values | The Windows Club

OK i just set my documents & settings folder for deny to see what happens and it looks like everything can still be accessed from the network. I think that when I first got this, I went to that folder and panicked when I couldn't get into it and set the permissions. BUT I just looked on our laptop, which is Win7 64 bit, and there is no documents & settings folder on the c drive.

I recommend you do a complete clean install.
SSD / HDD : Optimize for Windows Reinstallation
Clean Install Windows 7
Clean Install with a Upgrade Windows 7 Version

In the future, use Win 7 Backup and Restore.

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