Vista's replacement for My Documents

[DP]

Smart users of XP knew that My Documents was the best place to save stuff.
I've forgotten the exact reason for that (maybe someone can jump in and
explain). I believe it had to do with what gets swept up when setting System
Restore points.

In Vista, there is a Documents folder, but not My Documents. Is the
Documents folder the safe place to save stuff now in terms of what System
Restore will save when a new restore point is set?

 

[Jane C]

Yes. C:\Users\YOURNAME\Documents is the Vista equivalent of the old XP My
Documents.

 

[DP]

Thanks, Jane.

Yes. C:\Users\YOURNAME\Documents is the Vista equivalent of the old XP My
Documents.

 

[John Barnes]

Except that My Documents used to contain the folders for My Pictures, My
Music, etc used to be included in My Documents and their replacements are
now separate higher level folders.

 

[Homer J. Simpson]

Smart users of XP knew that My Documents was the best place to save stuff.

I will have to disagree with that assertion.

I already had my own personal file management scheme long before MS tried to
shove this My Documents concept down our throats. I've resisted it for
years, and moaned and complained that I couldn't permanently delete that
useless folder since it was introduced in Windows 95.

Eventually I gave in, and created a 4.35GB partition and moved the My
Documents folder to it. The size is ideal (whatever'll fit on that
partition can be quickly backed up to a single DVD) and the relative small
size forces me not to let useless crap accumulate. The files I would
consider essential to back up before a reinstall right now total well under
2GB.

However nowadays there's so many poorly written programs that just dump all
their data to it without ever asking (or providing the means to change that)
that the My Documents folder has become essentially useless. I've now run
out of disk space on that 4.35GB partition (even though my own data still
totals under 2GB); after struggling with space for months, I just gave up on
the whole My Documents folder idea again, rerouted it back to its default
location on C:, and ignore it. I still have my 2GB worth of *my own* files
(and nothing else) in its own partition. I've lost the "benefit" of having
a one-button "My Documents" shortcut in every File Open/Save dialog box (the
only benefit, really), but at least I'm not dealing with useless third-party
crap I didn't create myself on my backup DVD.

This whole effort by MS to take it upon themselves to try to make the user's
life "simpler" by introducing preset My Documents/Music/Videos/etc folders
(and taken entirely to the next level with Vista) is a complete waste of
time, because it's abused by third-party programs (including MS's own). I
say if these shortcuts are going to be considered useful at all, let the
*user* define folders for them and *don't* define them as presets that any
third-party application can query and dump data to. I mean, in "My
Documents", which part of "My" isn't understood?



Boy, did I go off on a tangent or what? Sorry, had to get this off my
chest. I'm sure there are others who think like me.

 

[Richard Urban]

This, of course, can be changed and they can be included under "Documents",
or in my case D:\My Documents.

I dual boot and have made this change for the purpose of being able to use
one store when booted into either Windows XP or Vista. It works fine.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban MVP
Microsoft Windows Shell/User

 

[Daze N. Knights]

Maybe this is why MS changed the name of "*My* Documents" to simply
"Documents."

 

[DanS]

I will have to disagree with that assertion.

I already had my own personal file management scheme long before MS
tried to shove this My Documents concept down our throats. I've

abused by
third-party programs (including MS's own). I say if these shortcuts
are going to be considered useful at all, let the *user* define
folders for them and *don't* define them as presets that any
third-party application can query and dump data to. I mean, in "My
Documents", which part of "My" isn't understood?



Boy, did I go off on a tangent or what? Sorry, had to get this
off my chest. I'm sure there are others who think like me.

There are many others that think the same. I being one.

What was it, iTunes, that won't even install if you don't have a 'My
Music' folder ?

 

[John Barnes]

Sorry to disagree, but I was happy when a standard place to put files was
introduced. Instead of having to search all over the drive, which was a
chore in those days, some in the root, some in program files in separate
folders, and some in the program's own program file in a sub folder. If you
had many programs making documents, many of which didn't give the
opportunity to change the location in those days, you need a roadmap to find
your documents each time you worked with them or wanted to access them.

 

[Jeffrey S. Sparks]

I agree, i like the fact that music, video, etc have their own folders and
are not IN the documents folder.

Jeff

 

[Charlie Russel - MVP]

Yes, it's effectively the same. In fact, if you have a "My Documents" folder
that you've moved and share with a dual booted XP, and you repoint Documents
to it in Vista, you'll see it as "Documents" when in Vista and My Documents
in XP x64.

 

[mikeyhsd]

why do you insist on cross posting between xp and vista for vista questions.

there are plenty of people to provide help and answers in the vista news groups. and not many in the xp groups that can help with vista.


(e-mail address removed)@sport.rr.com

Smart users of XP knew that My Documents was the best place to save stuff.
I've forgotten the exact reason for that (maybe someone can jump in and
explain). I believe it had to do with what gets swept up when setting System
Restore points.

In Vista, there is a Documents folder, but not My Documents. Is the
Documents folder the safe place to save stuff now in terms of what System
Restore will save when a new restore point is set?

 

[John Barnes]

Just for your information, this is an appropriate group for Vista64
questions. It is not an XP exclusive group and includes IA64 also.
I personally would like to have Vista split between 86 and 64 since many
times the solution to problems centers around which they are using. This is
especially true since Microsoft has eased their policy on all Vista programs
being required to work in both versions. Many drivers are also still being
provided only for the 86 version with no signing of the 64 drivers.

why do you insist on cross posting between xp and vista for vista questions.

there are plenty of people to provide help and answers in the vista news
groups. and not many in the xp groups that can help with vista.


(e-mail address removed)@sport.rr.com
Smart users of XP knew that My Documents was the best place to save stuff.
I've forgotten the exact reason for that (maybe someone can jump in and
explain). I believe it had to do with what gets swept up when setting System
Restore points.

In Vista, there is a Documents folder, but not My Documents. Is the
Documents folder the safe place to save stuff now in terms of what System
Restore will save when a new restore point is set?

 

[Charlie Russel - MVP]

This group is for all things 64-bit. Not for XP x64 only. This is an
appropriate newsgroup for Vista x64 questions that are truly 64-bit
specific. That's what we're here for.

--
Charlie.
http://msmvps.com/xperts64


why do you insist on cross posting between xp and vista for vista questions.

there are plenty of people to provide help and answers in the vista news
groups. and not many in the xp groups that can help with vista.


(e-mail address removed)@sport.rr.com

Smart users of XP knew that My Documents was the best place to save stuff.
I've forgotten the exact reason for that (maybe someone can jump in and
explain). I believe it had to do with what gets swept up when setting
System
Restore points.

In Vista, there is a Documents folder, but not My Documents. Is the
Documents folder the safe place to save stuff now in terms of what System
Restore will save when a new restore point is set?

 

[Homer J. Simpson]

As far as I'm concerned, it's really up to the user to save all of his own
files, created with any number of programs, in some common location--you can
add a distinctive folder for each program as you wish. This one, central
"My Documents" folder accomplishes that quite nicely, and the OS provides
convenient shortcuts to it from just about every location, making it easy to
access wherever you are.

The *problem*, however, with My Documents is that way too many programs have
started using that folder to dump their own binary data you wouldn't care
about if their lives depended on it. You don't see a problem with that?

Raymond Chen has a blog entry about this here
http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2006/12/28/1374334.aspx

 

[Jeffrey S. Sparks]

Actually i don't think its for ALL things 64-bit but for Vista in general...

Jeff

 

[mikeyhsd]

the question did not mention "64".

(e-mail address removed)@sport.rr.com

Just for your information, this is an appropriate group for Vista64
questions. It is not an XP exclusive group and includes IA64 also.
I personally would like to have Vista split between 86 and 64 since many
times the solution to problems centers around which they are using. This is
especially true since Microsoft has eased their policy on all Vista programs
being required to work in both versions. Many drivers are also still being
provided only for the 86 version with no signing of the 64 drivers.

why do you insist on cross posting between xp and vista for vista questions.

there are plenty of people to provide help and answers in the vista news
groups. and not many in the xp groups that can help with vista.


(e-mail address removed)@sport.rr.com
Smart users of XP knew that My Documents was the best place to save stuff.
I've forgotten the exact reason for that (maybe someone can jump in and
explain). I believe it had to do with what gets swept up when setting System
Restore points.

In Vista, there is a Documents folder, but not My Documents. Is the
Documents folder the safe place to save stuff now in terms of what System
Restore will save when a new restore point is set?

 

[mikeyhsd]

the question did not mention 64.

(e-mail address removed)@sport.rr.com

This group is for all things 64-bit. Not for XP x64 only. This is an
appropriate newsgroup for Vista x64 questions that are truly 64-bit
specific. That's what we're here for.

--
Charlie.
http://msmvps.com/xperts64


why do you insist on cross posting between xp and vista for vista questions.

there are plenty of people to provide help and answers in the vista news
groups. and not many in the xp groups that can help with vista.


(e-mail address removed)@sport.rr.com

Smart users of XP knew that My Documents was the best place to save stuff.
I've forgotten the exact reason for that (maybe someone can jump in and
explain). I believe it had to do with what gets swept up when setting
System
Restore points.

In Vista, there is a Documents folder, but not My Documents. Is the
Documents folder the safe place to save stuff now in terms of what System
Restore will save when a new restore point is set?

 

[DP]

Thanks, Officer Mikey. "Insist"? I can swear to you this is the first time
I've ever cross-posted to this and a Vista group. I know, because I had to
teach myself how to crosspost in order to do it.
If you can find some other example of when I did so, please provide the
evidence. If not, then please apologize.

I was a user of XP Professional X64 before I was a Vista user. I was reading
the 64-bit group long before I went to any Vista groups.
As a result, I appreciate the knowledge of the members of the 64-bit
group -- a kind of brain trust, as it were. By comparison, I see a lot of
newbies asking very basic questions in the Vista group.

One more thing: It was a member of this group who clued me in to the
importance of the My Documents folder.

 

[DP]

I will have to disagree with that assertion.

Thanks for the thoughtful post. Let me say what I meant by the line from my
original post that you repeated. What I meant to say is that if you save
your stuff to My Documents, you know that you're saving it in a place where
it will be preserved by System Restore.

I agree with you that it's nice to put things where you want them. And I
still do that to a large extent. I guess what I meant was that when I know
something positively absolutely has to be there if I'm ever called upon to
do a system restore, the My Documents is the magic folder where I should be
saving things.

Yes, it's counterintuitive to save EVERYTHING to My Documents. It seems to
defeat the purpose of the folder system. Sort of like Using Quicken or MS
Money and then categorizing all of your expenditures as "miscellaneous."

One thing I've taken to doing (tho I don't do this exclusively) is to store
a lot of stuff in My Documents (or that's what I did with XP X64) in their
own folders and then to use desktop shortcuts to them. So in a way, I'm
categorizing things in folders, but using the safety of My Documents for
them.

One mild criticism of your post, though: It seems kind of silly to criticize
MS and other software manufacturers because you created a system in which My
Documents has a maximum size and then exceed the maximum. MS didn't create
it that way, so it's really a problem of your own making.

Thanks again. You raise good points.