Can you map your Desktop to another drive?

[ddix1026]

A friend of mine is wondering if he could map his desktop items to a secondary drive. The reason is that he wants to get a SSD for his operating system drive when he builds his new desktop, but since he does a lot of video editing and other fairly large-file things, he typically keeps them on the desktop until they are completed, and he was wondering if you could re-map the desktop to a secondary drive so he doesnt run out of room quickly.

Is this possible? I have never heard of it, nor would I need to do it, but I thought I would give it a whirl in here and see if anyone HAS done it, or if you even CAN do it.

My thought is no, since the Desktop is tied directly to the operating system and the user account, but I wanted to be sure..

Cheers

 

[CLassicD]

Your thought is correct, although it is possible Microsoft says this is only suited to a test environment.

ProfilesDirectory

Your desktop is part of your profile including your Documents, videos, Downloads etc and they are not designed to be moved. My solution would be to mount the new volume so you have more space, this would enable the drive to be under the same drive letter and also appear that your Primary partition is extended.

Edit: please excuse, this reply is talking about the complete user profile, not single user docs.

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

Hello.



Not exactly what you're asking for, here's an interesting tutorial at the link below.


User Profiles - Create and Move During Windows 7 Installation

 

[Shootist]

Your thought is correct, although it is possible Microsoft says this is only suited to a test environment.

ProfilesDirectory

Your desktop is part of your profile including your Documents, videos, Downloads etc and they are not designed to be moved. My solution would be to mount the new volume so you have more space, this would enable the drive to be under the same drive letter and also appear that your Primary partition is extended.

Sorry but the Documents(My Documents)/Video/Music and whatnot folders most certainly can be moved to another partition or physical drive. In fact it is quit easy to do right from the Properties of the Document and other folders and it is design that way. No special trickery needed. It is built into the OS.

Now as far as the Desktop I'm not sure it can or should be done.

Best is to tell your friend to instead of placing those files on the desktop place a shortcut to them on the desktop. That way he still has ready access to them but only uses a few KBs of space on the C boot drive.

Not sure why so many people end up placing all kinds of stuff on there desktop. Other then Program shortcuts.

 

[Vincenzo]

You used the word "map", not sure if you had something specific in mind, but the Desktop can be moved to another location.
click Start>username> right click on Desktop click Properties
Go to the Location tab
Click Move

looks like Shootist beat me to the punch
I do this commonly on every computer I set up, so there is no issue with this.

 

[ddix1026]

well, he would move the files off his desktop once he is finished with them, its just a temporary thing. he was concerned with using up a lot of the main SSD hard drive space while he is in the process of working on them (home videos, etc. take up a lot of space while you work on them, at least his do). Once he completes what he's working on, he puts them onto a different internal SATA HDD..

i know that other folders (or libraries) can be moved/mapped elsewhere (I have done that myself), and I have no real need to re-map the desktop to a different drive, but he was just inquiring.. I dont personally think its a good idea to try it because if something goes wrong, you could screw lots of stuff up with your account, but I figured I would throw it out there..

 

[ddix1026]

Shootist/Vincenzo - i actually am not using 7 here at work, so I can't tell if what you are suggesting is what he is looking for. I will take a look at that when i get home on my desktop (with 7) and see if that's what he means...

 

[Ztruker]

Why not make this easy and store in-process work on the other drive and crate a link to it on the Desktop. That way it's easy to access active work but does not use space on the boot drive.

 

[ddix1026]

that would be too easy Ztrucker.. (I don't know why)..

However, in fact, Vincenzo and Shootist seem to be correct, you can move the location of the Desktop folder.. I will let him know that (he is in the process of building his new Win 7 machine now) and he can do with that info what he will.

Cheers

 

[Shootist]

Actually if I was ready to reinstall the OS I would move the whole USER and ProgramData folders to another drive.
I already have the My Docs, Music, whatever folders on another drive and email storage and internet cache on other drives.

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

Actually if I was ready to reinstall the OS I would move the whole USER and ProgramData folders to another drive.
I already have the My Docs, Music, whatever folders on another drive and email storage and internet cache on other drives.

Hello mate, have you had look at the tutorial by Kari I posted above?

 

[Shootist]

Actually if I was ready to reinstall the OS I would move the whole USER and ProgramData folders to another drive.
I already have the My Docs, Music, whatever folders on another drive and email storage and internet cache on other drives.

Hello mate, have you had look at the tutorial by Kari I posted above?

Yes but didn't see anyway to move them now. Did I miss something? I just browsed through it.

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

Actually if I was ready to reinstall the OS I would move the whole USER and ProgramData folders to another drive.
I already have the My Docs, Music, whatever folders on another drive and email storage and internet cache on other drives.

Hello mate, have you had look at the tutorial by Kari I posted above?

Yes but didn't see anyway to move them now. Did I miss something? I just browsed through it.

Naw, that's just for use during an install but once it's been setup it can be re-done for subsequent installs very easily.

 

[Redhouse]

You can change various "special" folders here:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders\Desktop
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders\Desktop

in the attached pic you can see I've relocated my "Desktop" to my E: drive which helps me save time when I have to re-image the boot-drive.

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

If you are going to muck about in the Windows registry, I suggest you export a backup of the registry first in case of any possible issues you may encounter.

Backup and Restore the Windows 7 Registry


You could also create a System Restore point but a registry backup would be more reliable.

How to Create a System Restore Point in Windows 7