HELP!! Problem with "mirrored" files on drive

[Ferdy]

To any of you computer gurus out there--

Here is my problem---

I bought a new computer and also purchased a file transfer software to copy
my data files from old computer to new.

All went well except for one thing---the files are doubled on my new
computer. In a sense.

Here's the deal---the directory tree goes like this, using Windows Explorer:
Just under Desktop at the top of the tree is My Documents; and when expanded
contains all of the data files and directories from the old computer. The
next item farthest left in the tree under the expanded My Documents folder
is My Computer. In order after this (unexpanded) are Local Disk C:, DVD/CD
RW Drive D:, Control Panel, Shared Documents, then (My name) Documents.
When (My name) Documents is expanded, it is an exact copy of My Documents
from above. OK, simple, right? Just delete one or the other of them and
everything's great, right? WRONG! If you delete one of them, the other
deletes also!!

What gives with this, and what's the solution? This is 9 GIGS of hard drive
space that I want to recapture, and can't. By the way, it's definitely
there taking up the space, running utilities shows them as junk files. I
also verified by doing a hard drive inventory. I had the idea of running a
backup on the hard drive, going in after the backup and deleting them all,
then re-installing just one of them, but that doesn't work, they both
reappear again, even though they are NOT shown doubled on the backup
utility. (The My Documents part of the hard drive tree doesn't show up in
the backup utility tree., only the My name Documents part.)

Please put some thought to this and suggest solutions---

By the way I can't go back to the old machine and redo the file transfer, I
already deleted the data files and gave the old computer away.

TIA

 

[Guest]

Have you got 'shortcuts' instead of files.

Right click and check the 'properties' and be certain that you actually have
duplicate files and not simply a shortcut to the file locations.

If there are 'duplicates' try creating a separate folder, call it C:\OLD PC
and then copy the root folder across and the subfoldersd and files will go
across as well.

So it would be like this:
C:\OLD PC\MY DOCUMENTS\FOLDER1\files
C:\OLD PC\MY DOCUMENTS\FOLDER2\files
C:\OLD PC\MY DOCUMENTS\FOLDER4\SUB FOLDER\files

Make sure all folders and files have been copied across and then you can
delete the erroneous folder\files etc.

 

[Nepatsfan]

The two instances of your My Documents folder in Windows Explorer
both refer to the same folder, not two separate ones. Right click
on each entry and you'll find that they both point to the same
location. That's why when you deleted one the other disappeared
as well.

Take a look at the picture in this article. It shows the default
Windows Explorer view that exists on your computer, my computer
and millions of other XP computers:

http://www.tomshardware.com/consumer/20010803/xp-07.html

Notice "My Documents" at the top and "Eric's Documents" at the
bottom?

As far as your missing hard drive space, what makes you think
that you're missing 9 gigs?
What size is your hard drive? What utilities did you run that
show junk files? Have you run a search based on file size to see
if there are a large quantity of duplicated files in two
locations?

Keep in mind that the numbers used to describe the size of a hard
drive refer to the number of bytes not the number of gigabytes.
For instance a HD sold as being "160 GB" contains space for 160
million bytes. In order to translate that into actual gigabytes
you have to divide by 1024 twice. What that means is that a "160
GB HD" has a total capacity of 152 gigabytes.