I thought that Libraries could be handy and started to use them last week, putting all my photos and music from other internal drives into them. A BIG problem I found was that my Win7 Backup shot up in size to a ridiculous figure. I already have a backup system in place for data, so this was a bad move and I'm going to have to look into how to sort it out. A warning might have been appreciated, I don't remember seeing any.
I admit that I have not read this thread in detail, so I may have missed the point, because a person can move any library to another partition or drive, so it would seem that would eliminate the loss of data due to a corrupted OS. I have not tried moving them to external drives, so I don't know if that entails any certain issues or not. The only thing that I think was a problem was when I attempted to use the built-in backup feature, it kept freezing part of the way through, and I have a feeling that was due to the dislocation of the libraries. I solved that by using a different backup utility.
I have never expected any Windows OS to always meet my expectations, or perhaps I should say "hopes", nor do I expect that any version in the future ever will, so I only think in terms of comparison to what I have had in the past, and by that measure, W7 does quite well. Instead of thinking about any negative aspects of the changes, I simply try to adapt, and after doing so, I'm usually happy with things as they are.
Enough's enough of Libraries, it's clunky and a deadly slow way of working as it confuses me trying work out where files REALLY are (I'm easily confused). When I kept getting asked to open something when I was trying to save that was the point when I gave up.
I've taken all my folders out of Libraries and reverted to a simple My Docs etc. folder structure with an xxcopy 64 bit DOS type backup of data to another drive which is a blindingly fast method, double click on a shortcut and any new files are added to the backup folder in literally a second if there isn't much and as quick as your drives can manage if there's a lot. Libraries could be a good idea if it were more logical or if someone could point out a real advantage and a good workflow to use it effectively.
you know, in libraries, there is a default save location. That means, if you saved a document to the document library, it doesn't actually save to the library. It saves it to your default save location (you my document folder). This is why it is so awesome because you see all your documents from various folders but saving them causes them to be clumped in one good location. You can also change the default save folder
Cheers~!
Include a folder but exclude one of its subfolders? And you can do that with the "My Computer" old Explorer view? How? Sounds like he needs to move that subfolder to anothet location, in which case it would not be in the Library view either.
The Library feature solves a problem that existed since Win 3.1, a single view of multiple folders on multiple devices that is user configurable. It also enables easy searching of the same.
If you don't like it don't use it. Plop a My Computer shortcut on the desktop or in the Taskbar and be done with it.
Well, suppose the data is spread across several hard drives, including external drives. One day I want to take some of the files with me. Would be quite useful to know, which external drive are they on, right? Especially if "taking them with me" basically means slipping the external drive into my bag.
Now, more to the point of the thread, I do not understand people's frustration with libraries. I understand that some people do not like using them. I have only recently started using them myself. I found them to be useful for the multitude of photos on my computer, but at the same time they don't help me with my work at all.
But, the good thing about them - libraries are not real files, just links, so if you don't like them - don't use them, that's all there is to it! If you are so frustrated with the extra line in the navigation pane, then use Brink's tutorial and remove it.
If you are frustrated that explorer opens in libraries by default, then simply point your shortcut to %windir%\explorer.exe /n,/e, E:\home or whatever your favorite folder (instead of E:\home) - it will automatically go there when you click on the shortcut.
Organizing your data is your personal task. Everybody has their favorite way of doing this, there are no universal recipes - it all depends on what data, how much data, how do you like accessing your data, etc. Libraries is just one of the new ways to do this. Nobody forces you to use them.
