Separate partition no longer advisable for user-created files?

[Guest]

On my new Vista Home Premium box I was planning to locate my user-created
files (docs, pictures, music, and such) in a separate partition, as was a
pretty straightforward and usual thing to do in XP. But complications soon
emerged in Vista when I began experimenting with relocating personal folders
using Move on the Location tab in Properties view, so I started hunting
around on this forum for more information.

The impression I now get is that using a separate partion in this way is
probably no longer an advisable practice in Vista - not, at any rate, if it
means having to do additional registry tweaks to eliminate duplicated
Documents icons etc., AND with the likelihood that it could cause problems
for legacy software programs.

I'd be very interested to get some more expert views on this.

 

[Neil Harley]

On my new Vista Home Premium box I was planning to locate my user-created
files (docs, pictures, music, and such) in a separate partition, as was a
pretty straightforward and usual thing to do in XP. But complications soon
emerged in Vista when I began experimenting with relocating personal folders
using Move on the Location tab in Properties view, so I started hunting
around on this forum for more information.

The impression I now get is that using a separate partion in this way is
probably no longer an advisable practice in Vista - not, at any rate, if it
means having to do additional registry tweaks to eliminate duplicated
Documents icons etc., AND with the likelihood that it could cause problems
for legacy software programs.

I'd be very interested to get some more expert views on this.

I moved (My) Documents to D:\ using the 'Location' tab and have had no
problems.

 

[JerryM]

You can use it the same way you did on the XP version.
If you don't have a second partition, you have to create it in Disk
Management,
by shrinking C: drive, creating an unallocated space that can be made into a
useable partition.

 

[dean-dean]

From my perspective moving shell folders (the ones with the special Location
tab in the folder's properties) is fine. And you don't have to use their
Location tabs to move them. In fact, some get confused by the subsequent
pop up dialogs that occur when they do do it via Location tab, and end up
creating two folders, loosing the desktop.ini for the folder they intended
to be their shell folder, etc., and don't know how to undo their dilemma.
But moving them by other means, you need to be aware of this:

If you Drag and Drop on the same drive, the default action is Move. If you
Drag and Drop from one Drive to another, the default action is Copy (which
is another way some end up with two folders). Using right-click dragging
will give you a choice. Cut and Paste is another option to Move a folder or
file, in which case the drive destination doesn't matter.

I actually feel the Cut and Paste method is the safest and easiest. Once
done this way, you can verify it's registry entry on the Location tab of the
folder's Properties, and Restore Default will work as it should to restore
it to the default location, should you want to.

Too, don't try to move the entire UserName folder using Explorer. It's not
a shell folder, and has no Location tab. The UserName folder contains
several junction point files that can cause all kinds of chaos when moved
across drives (moving the junction to a different location on the same drive
only moves the junction, however moving it to another drive turns the
junction point into a normal folder and moves all files there (leaving the
targeted directory empty), just to point out one pitfall. Vista's junction
points are pretty much pointers to shell folders.

 

[Richard Urban]

I have moved all of my personal files to drive D: and have never looked
back. I have been doing this since Windows 95, when I was dual booting with
OS/2. Every computer since has had those same files, in the same folder, on
drive D:

I just looked in My Documents on D: drive and I have some files that are
thirteen years old. Through many catastrophes, system rebuilds and new
computers - I have never lost these important files (of course I backup the
My Documents folder faithfully). I still dual or triple boot. These files
are available to any system I boot into.

Personally, I can not see any reason to do it any other way.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

 

[Guest]

I always use a separate partition for these files and, like prior replies,
have never had a problem. In XP, I even backed them up on a separately
installed drive in the event the main drive went down. The process is pretty
straight forward, nearly the same as with XP. Just follow the instructions.